the smoking vegans

Dear Roseann,

2006-08-08T08:07:00.000-04:00

In regards to your recent review of my book, I have one question: why didn't you read it? In your review you write, "Anyway, who wants to take advice from someone who tells you that while dating omnis might be okay for you, he wouldn't be caught dead doing it?" Of course, I basically say that--in the first 10 pages or so, but then I take it back for the rest of the book. One of the biggest points that the book makes is that ultimately I don't think it's a good idea to rule out dating omnis, which I did myself! After all, that's how I met my fiancée. There is no way you could have read the book and not gleaned this oh-so-basic point. None. Nada. Zilch. Nein. Non. Nyet. Had you read the book--which is, as you may have noticed, quite short--you'd know this. If you're going to write a negative review of the book, fine. Just read it first.

Now to address your concerns about the first chapter of the book, as that seems to be as far as you got, give or take some skimming and flipping.

"I don’t want to be told that what I’m reading is simply a product of the fact that the author is getting paid by the word. Way to make the people who might have actually shelled out for your book feel like a bunch of schmucks!"

That was pretty obviously a joke. Believe it or not, the book is full of them. In fact, one of the ways you know it's a joke is that it's repeated a few times, just to sap the last drop of humor from it. You'd know it was definitely a joke if you had read the book.

"Not to mention the fact that most of his 'advice' isn’t vegan-specific—which was sort of the point, wasn’t it?"

Maybe the ultimate point is that vegans are people too, and as such subject to regular-people kind of problems? Frankly, I am not too big on books geared towards vegans that are simply "vegan, vegan, vegan" the whole way through. It's been done, and it's tiresome. What else can I say about this? Sorry I didn't write a book that made you feel special enough about being vegan.

"Because what I fear is coming next is Dispatches From Hell Part 2: A Vegan’s Guide to Getting Married, Having Kids, and Retiring Early on Your Book Royalties. It will be filled with all the things you could do (but Peyser didn’t) to make those things happen. And he will still be pissed."

My book royalties? Speaking of jokes! Tofu Hound is lucky if they recover the initial costs of the book. Then, I see either pennies or at most, $1, per book sold. I'm not sure how your math is, Roseann. Mine's not so hot. But I'll tell you, from what my calculator says, 1 x 2,000 (a generous guess at how many copies this might sell) is not a whole lot of money, and definitely not what one might call considerable "book royalties"--let alone enough money to retire on. If you're curious, I make slightly below the livable wage for a single person. I can afford to pay my basic bills, and not much else. I wrote the book on a $400 used PowerBook. And while I haven't decided where the book money will go, you can rest assured that unless a dire medical situation arises, or I'm about to be evicted, the money will go to a worthy cause other than me and my groceries. Perhaps I'll donate it to the "Helping Roseann Marulli Stop Abusing Parentheses Fund." A worthy charity, to be sure.

Finally, to address your actual critique of the book, or what little of it you actually read: that I mixed formulas when I should have stuck with one. Obviously, it's your prerogative to think that. It would be more your prerogative to think that if you had read the book, but you still get to think whatever you want--even when you haven't read it. I'll let you in on a secret. I used to think the same thing, especially as I was writing it. But I realized after the fact that this mixture was one of the book's strengths. For all my retrospective concerns about the book, this is no longer one of them. Maybe, if you ever decide to read the book, you'll arrive at this conclusion as well. Maybe not.

One thing is certain: you'd know any and all of this, had you 1) actually read the book, or 2) contacted me for comment.

Cheers,
Dan

Book review cunts

2006-08-07T21:10:00.000-04:00

For my thoughts on the latest review of my book by the kind folks at Supervegan.com, listen to the latest edition of Abolition Radio.

Cheers,
Dan

I'm done with my book, and here's why you should read it.

2006-05-26T15:41:00.000-04:00

Because it cost Tofu Hound some serious cash up front, and they need to make it all back.

Also, it's a pretty good book. Visit the site at www.dispatchesfromhell.org.

A fond farewell

2006-03-14T18:55:00.000-05:00

Over the past weekend, our female hooded rat, Grim (left), passed away. While Jsteak and I were gone at the time, by all appearances she went--thankfully--in her sleep. Her original cagemate, Twitch (featured in a previous post below) is distraught, but so far okay. The newer adopted pair don't seem too affected.

Grim was probably the best rat I have ever had the privilege of caring for, and I am confident Jsteak and I are better for having adopted her. She was a little over two years old at the time of her passing, and came originally from an overcrowded cage in a pet store, which no doubt contributed to her rather early death. Curious, cute, and well-mannered, no one could have asked for a better rattie. Her favorite activities included shoulder rides and nestling on the back of the neck under one's hair. Grim was especially fond of licking fingers. She was always the first to greet us when we came home, and her antics and attention never failed to make me smile when I was feeling down. She will be sorely missed by Jsteak and myself, and most of all by Twitch.

Finally, I unveil my project

2006-03-08T00:49:00.000-05:00

Dispatches from Hell: a vegan's guide to love, sex, relationships, and other suicidal tendencies Coming Soon from Tofu Hound Press.

Am I fucking retarded, or is it just my Pepcid?

2006-03-06T12:39:00.000-05:00

I have awful acid reflux (Note: Please no comments about how my smoking doesn't help, as that's kind of a given and would just be really annoying). Since I don't have the cash for the purple pill or any of that other fancy crap, I take Pepcid chewables. The other night, we were going to a friend's house for some vegan mushroom and seitan stroganoff and I realized I forgot my antacid. We pulled into a gas station, and Jsteak grabbed me some more Pepcid, for which they charged an exorbitant amount of money--or so I'm told, since Jsteak is my suggarmomma and I didn't offer any cash to help. I forgot all about the Pepcid until we got to our friends' place, and my throat started killing me. So I opened up a Pepcid, popped it in my mouth, and chewed it up. And fuck if it didn't taste worse than an aging priest's taint. It was painfully bad. My whole face contorted, and it was at that very moment I realized, Pepcid also made non-chewable tablets, and that was what was in my mouth.

I learned a very valuable lesson that night. I'm not sure what it is, but I refuse to think I needlessly chewed up that mouth of ass. And every now and then, I second guess myself when I'm about to chew up my antacid.

Pictures!

2006-03-06T11:56:00.000-05:00

While I acclimate to having internet again, I figured I'd post a couple of pictures of two of our rats (there are two others not yet featured). The hooded rat (the black and white one) is Grim, the other (gray) is Twitch. You can click on the respective pictures to enlarge them. We adopted Grim and Twitch from friends who weren't able to care for them any longer. Our other two rats, Creepy and Schultz, are both Sprague-Dawleys Jsteak saved from our old university's bio lab, where they had been used for food depravation experiments and were a day away from being euthanized. We'll put up pictures of them soon.

My partner is a loser virgin

2006-03-06T11:45:00.000-05:00

Okay, well I guess the virgin part isn't quite right, but she's definitely a loser. Look folks, I know I haven't posted much in the past months. And I've had my reasons, the biggest of which will be revealed soon. But I've also had no internet. Every now and then, I've managed to get access, and post something. Jsteak? Nope. She doesn't care. She doesn't care about any of you. I want to see some nasty fucking comments about why she won't post. She cares so little, when I told her I was going to post this very post, she shrugged and said, "Okay." So I added in her least favorite picture of herself. How about them apples, beeeotch? Note the little smudge of stuff on the left corner of her chin (her right). Is it cake or semen? I'll let you decide.

Sorry, I hope you kids weren't looking for a more intellectual post.

Lights, camera, internet!

2006-03-01T16:22:00.000-05:00

Finally we have home internet access. Hip-hop-hooray. This means we'll be back with our regularly un-scheduled blogging. Also, my "big secret project" is almost out of the way, so expect lots soon.

Me so horny

2006-01-26T21:30:00.000-05:00

Me love you long time.

Valentine's Day comes early

2005-12-29T16:42:00.000-05:00

A little love note I received in conversation today with a certain Vegan Freak:

"...Because I'll take it out on you when I ram my purple-helmeted Latin love warrior into your chocolate rosebud."

Totally Hallmark Material. Totally. Anyone good with Flash? That could make a awfully steamy e-card.

Yeah, well Small Dog can lick me

2005-12-29T15:54:00.000-05:00

In addition to being a smoking vegan, I'm also an Apple user. If you're one too, you've doubtless heard of Small Dog Electronics, one of the fastest growing third party sellers of Apple-related crap. The actual Small Dog (not the 800 number, not the website) is about 5 minutes from our apartment, and has been there for awhile now. I started going there a couple of summers ago to window shop, and occasionally buy stuff. My 3G iPod, RAM upgrades, second HD, a 4G iPod, adapters of all sorts, etc.

Somewhere along the line, their ego inflated. A lot. So much so, they treat average customers like total shit. Even customers that have spent an ass-ton of their hard-earned cash there. Which, I guess if you're Small Dog, is how you say "Thanks for helping a Small Business get to the point where we don't value you anymore." The last few times I've been in there, the customer service has been worse than terrible. Hell, the average Apple Store now has better service than Small Dog. And have you ever been in an Apple Store? It's like fucking "Night of the Living Dead" meets the Heaven's Gate cult, but with pretty computers.

SD's tech support folks used to be the best. Now they've been replaced by zitty twenty-year-olds who can't get laid and still live in their mom's basement. Fuck, they couldn't get laid even if they had a brand-new Nano hanging out of their fly, which is about the size of what's down there anyway, I imagine. And you know what? It shows. Their are mean little bastards whose sole mission is no longer to help, but to bilk you out of as much money as possible. If you are actually there for tech support because of an error on their part, they delay and huff as much as they can in an effort to make you give up on getting help. It's rather astonishing.

Or, if you just want to buy something, you end up waiting nearly half an hour. But not in line. Just in front of the register. There's no line. Because everyone in front of you left twenty minutes earlier, when they realized no one was coming to help, even though plenty of staffers walked buy. Now this isn't a giant place. It's probably smaller than most Dunkin' Donuts. It's not as though employees must make a long, arduous journey across a warehouse and over a minefield to make it to the register. They are just lazy assholes who don't give a shit about shop customers, since most of their sales come from online and the phone. Suddenly the people who helped them get where they are today aren't worth an Apple ][ with Reader Rabbit in the floppy drive.

The bottom line now is, they just don't give a shit. After a while, I gave up on SD. There's a guy right in town who does great Apple repair work, and sells used and refurbished models for unbeatable prices. But one day recently I wanted to pick up an Airport card, and maybe a replacement battery for my Mercury TiBook, and lo and behold, my friend in town was closed. He sells the card for about $100, and the battery he would probably just strip out from an old machine. You know, because he's nice. I had only one option at this point, and that was SD. Given my history of unpleasantness, I figured it might be best to call first. After getting an actual person on the line, I found that SD--less than 10 miles away from Darrad, the place I go for Mac stuff now--was carrying the Airport cards for $169, and batteries for $125. Would they match the price of the place 6 miles away on the same road? No. Does that seem, well, kinda stupid? Oh well.

Fuck Small Dog. What a bunch of fucks.

Tobacco saves lives?

2005-12-28T16:00:00.000-05:00

While I'm staunchly against GMOs, I'd be remiss not to post a link to this.

Greyhound: "Leave the sadistic, unforgiving sodomy to us"

2005-12-28T14:26:00.000-05:00

I don't normal travel via Greyhound. I've done it in the past, though, and it's not been half bad. So when I bought my bus ticket a couple of days ago to go visit jsteak & family, I figured all would be well. Granted, it was a 13 hour-ish bus ride, which would suck, but all in all, it would be better than driving, as we could just share one car on the trip back.

What I endured, however, was not a pleasant, half way pleasant, or average bus trip. It was a fucking nightmare. It was almost like Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, for old Twighlight Zone fans. Traveling from Montpelier to Ithaca would normally take about six or six-and-a-half hours. Greyhound typically takes double the time of a normal trip. In this case, I went from Vermont to Massachusetts, to Connecticut, to NYC, to New Jersey, to Ithaca.

As if this weren't bad enough, throughout the day people tried to hustle me, I somehow got stuck next to really oversized passengers, landed the one seat that had six inches less legroom than all the others, had no food, got nasuea trying to read, had one driver playing loud gospel music, was given totally different directions to my terminal at the NYC station which nearly resulted in a missed bus, and finally I suffered a nervous breakdown. Okay, well not quite. But the rest of it is true. The worst of it was definitely NYC.

I should say that I hate New York City. In this one rare instance, I don't actually mean to offend. But I do. I fucking hate it. While I would issue a warning for all people I like to evacuate first, I would almost certainly nuke it if given the opportunity. Witholding my whole NYC rant for later, suffice it to trying to navigate the bus terminal is a bit like trying to navigate a carnival House of Mirrors maze the size of Rush Limbaugh's ass, and equally traumatizing. There are few to no signs, just a long line of terminal numbers, on three floors, ranging into the hundreds. Normally, that would be okay, if there were terminal and departure monitors. There were maybe four for the whole place, and not very accessible. Those normally help, because they tell you what gate to go to (your ticket doesn't), but instead, they tell you what time the bus is leaving (which your ticket does tell you). After running between information terminals, where the folks were kind enough to give me totally opposite advice, I ran up to people in lines like a lunatic, frantically asking where they were going. I finally got the bus.

But let's elaborate on the information terminals. Here's one such conversation.

Me: Where does the bus to Binghamton/Ithaca leave from?
Lady: Terminal 61.
Me: Okay, thanks.

(I go check terminal 61, see no times listed, and then go back)

Me: So, when does that bus leave?
Lady: 6:30.
Me: My ticket says 4:30.
Lady: Oh, that bus is at a different terminal.
Me: Excuse me?
Lady: Third floor. (I'm on the ground floor where the FIRST information guy on the SECOND floor told me to go)

(At this point in the conversation, I realize why they are surrounded by protective glass, as I have an urgent desire to strangle her)

What the fuck is it with rude, asshole, fuckwit, retarded, aggressive, shit-throwing monkey bunch of New Yorkers to whom even DOING THEIR FUCKING JOB is an inconvenience? That whole city needs to take some Xanax and get slapped around a little with a big ol' cock. You know, and then nuked.

Seriously, what a bunch of assholes. Anyway, I'll try to save the NYC thing for another entry, I promise.

[For once I am to angry too finish an entry in a coherent way. My brain just exploded. It makes it very difficult to see the monitor. I'll try again later. Sorry.]

Lest there be any doubt, I am, in fact, the Grinch--albeit somewhat more Jewish

2005-12-24T22:39:00.000-05:00

This just in, after a conversation with Jsteak who is having a happy Christmas with her family. Lord, am I a sad, bitter bastard. I love how the holidays bring out the best in us.

This holiday season, stay warm with anal electrocution

2005-12-24T21:51:00.000-05:00

Recently my grandfather had a stroke that landed him in the hospital. Then he had another one while in rehab. I'll spare you the details, but it's pretty shitty.

I know this type of thing is supposed to "bring the family together." Or at least, that's what people tell me. Most of my father's side of the family is up for the holidays, and the other day my dad's sister arrived. I should state this woman is outrageously gaudy. I'm not sure why I was surprised when she walked into the hospital room with a full length fur coat. I say "fur coat" both because I'm pretty sure she doesn't do the "faux" thing, and because I'm not sure what sort of animal it was actually made out of. She probably thinks mink, but really, who knows?

So the fur coat thing kind of got me going, but I tried not to say anything, as all my relatives were right there and I didn't want to cause a scene in my grandad's hospital room. But then she tried to hug me. With the coat on, you ask? Oh, yes. With the coat on. And G-d help me, as she hugged me all I could think about was how much I wanted to shove an electrified wand up her ass while she bit on a conductor. Just so she could get the a real feel for her jacket. Or, you know, just scream at her.

Is this wrong? Honestly, what the fuck is wrong with her? She then proceeded to make some cracks about my diet that would have been cute were I seven months into it, not seven years. Oh, for the patience not to slug her tomorrow. And the day after that.

Need to feel good about yourself? Try jerking off.

2005-12-18T18:54:00.000-05:00

I had an interesting conversation with jsteak a few nights back, and never had a chance to report. Thankfully, I'm around the internet for a few moments, so you get a brand spanking new post. Apparently, she explained, we’re not vegan. This according to some forum user over at Vegan Freak HQ. At first I was incensed, but after we talked some more about it, I think I understand. They’re right. We’re not vegan.

Except I don’t understand, and they’re not right. The argument was that as cigarettes are tested on animals, smoking cigarettes makes one not vegan. First of all, not all cigarettes are tested on animals. Frankly, I think this is besides the point. But let’s say that using products tested on animals makes someone not vegan. If we take this as true, then there are no vegans. None. Not any. Zilch. Because almost everything is tested on animals. Pharmaceuticals, detergents, even vegetable cooking oils are all animal tested.

And here’s the thing about people who make worn-out, banal, asinine comments to the effect of “smoking isn’t vegan”: these people are not only assholes, but really pompous assholes. Allow me to expound. In the act of not smoking, you accomplish nothing beyond affecting your personal health. Do I feel better that I smoke a brand of cigarettes not tested on animals? Sometimes. But I don’t delude myself by thinking it’s actually saving any. In fact, the same can be said about veganism as a whole. There are more vegans than ever today. There are also more animals being slaughtered than ever. Clearly, being vegan isn’t enough. It needs to be combined with public outreach, direct action, and anti-capitalism. For some people though, moral pompousness is enough. For self-congratulatory fuckwits like you fine folks, being vegan, not smoking, and everything else they do, has but one purpose: to make you feel good about yourself as a substitute for actually challenging any real structures of oppression. In fact, everything you do is geared towards this. Not smoking does absolutely nothing to make the world better. For you, it’s just a superiority trip. Don’t kid yourself. You’re not the next Rosa Parks, you’re just some smug sod who needs to get their feel-good fix.

Next time, try jerking off instead.

Incidentally, I’m done being apologetic about smoking. Do you have a problem with my smoking? Why don’t you go play hide-and-go-fuck-yourself. I’m not budging on this any more. It’s ridiculous. On the list of social injustices, if you rank smoking on it at all, let alone in a high-up place, that’s because you are either a total moron or a loser virgin.

Lotto ticket motherfuckers

2005-11-25T09:58:00.000-05:00

I smoke. We've established this. The biggest downside to it? No, it's not cancer, bad teeth, or the money spent. It's the assholes that stand in line in front of me while I'm waiting to be them at the gas station. They're doing scratch tickets. It's not enough for them to buy their tickets, get out of line, and then play. Nope. They've got to stand their like the dumbfucks they are, scratching away at the counter. If they win, they put the money right back into a couple more tickets. If they lose, they put the money into however many tickets it takes to win back the money they initially spent. Usually, they hmm and haw over which brand of ticket to buy, as though there's really a difference. The fuckwit doesn't get the tickets are sorted by odds, not brands. There is no fucking difference! Strangely enough, the clerks never seem to mind. Then again, I guess when someone spends that much quality time around you, you probably develop a real relationship with them. Other times, the clerk actually seems to have a genuine emotional stake in whether or not the asshole wins.

So I'm left holding my dick in the wind, just wanting to buy my smokes and get to work on time, along with the other 30 people in the quickly-developing line. Here's what I'd like to say should I ever have the chance:

You know what, asshole? Those pairs of cherries, bells, bananas, and pots of gold are never going to line up to win you a million bucks. It's not happening. You're pissing your money away on a fruitless addiction. At least cigarettes taste good. The most you get is a chance to win back the two dollars you spent in the first place. Get the fuck out of line, do your scratch tickets somewhere else. You make me want to die. Or kill. And not just anyone. Hey, you got kids?

You are everything that is wrong with this world.

Extended hiatus or just lazy?

2005-11-06T11:51:00.000-05:00

Well, it's probably a combination of both. I've been working on a top secret project you'll find out about later, so it's consumed a lot of my free time lately. Don't worry/celebrate, however, I haven't died (nor has my cohort). We'll be back soon.

Why vivisection matters

2005-09-29T20:16:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago I had a unusually thought-provoking conversation with some vegan friends of mine. I say "unusually thought-provoking" not because conversations with them usually aren't, but because I don't usually have thought-provoking conversations with anyone (certain exceptions apply). The discussion revolved around whether vivisection was as important an issue as slaughterhouses and how this applies to drawing in new vegans. The point they made was that animals in vivisection represent an extremely small percentage of animals murdered annually, and consequently, we should focus primarily on slaughter and eating meat.

It makes sense, but ultimately I'm of two minds regarding the matter. I see their point, and I can't say it isn't valid. But here I'm going to argue, briefly, why vivisection matters both on a practical level, and regarding producing new vegans and bringing folks into the AL (animal liberation) struggle.

Vivsection is particularly horrific. Whether it's monkeys in restraining chairs, cats with electrodes wired into their heads, rabbits being administered the Draize test or skin irritation tests for makeup and detergents, or rats being administered the LD50 test, vivisection represents torture gone awry. Not even Mengele could have dreamed up some of the stuff done to animals in the names of the "march of progress" or "science." But vivisection is scientific fraud. On a practicle level, there is simply no need for vivisection. On a tactical level, the sheer horrors of vivisection, like fur, can startle even the most subdued meat-friendly mind to attention.

On a fundamental level, you can raid a lab with some level of efficacy, but to raid a slaughterhouse or factory farm? This is far less feasible. Direct action to save innocent life, whenever possible, is a fundamentally good thing.

In the end, far more animals are killed in the slaughterhouse than under the vivisectionist's knife, and to focus on this is undoubtedly important. I haven't quite gotten my head around some way to fit the pieces together, but can we afford to write of either front as less viable for action? More importantly, can the millions of animals mutilated every year in gruesome "scientific" experiments?

I'd write more, but my internet access is limited at the moment. More anon.

In Good Company? Or, why health food vegans suck

2005-09-22T02:51:00.000-04:00

On a small liberal arts university campus like the one I am temporarily forced to reside at, there are plenty of things to drive a chain-smoking commie vegan to utter madness (and dreams of shooting sprees). There are trustafarians. There are post-modernists. There are vivisectionists. There are republicans. There are democrats. There are smelly, feel-good, phish-obsessed, free-range idiot hippies. There are obnoxious vegetarians, so-called "flexitarians" (read: omnis/hypocrites), and ex-vegans. There are dining service workers who don't know what a "vay-gun" is. And then there is the other 90% of the student body- rich, white, apathetic, collar-popping, JCrew-clad, carbaphobic, diet coke drinking, Big Mac eating, ignorant twats. But at least you can find some respite in the company of other vegans, right?

Apparently not.

I first met the "leader" of the vegan group on campus at a student organization fair designed to get people interested in various clubs and what-have-you. It was then that she told me that the PETA materials showing *gasp* dead animals were too "scary" to put out. I thought that was weird, since most vegans I know became vegan after learning about the horrors of factory farming, the fur industry, the cosmetics industry, meat packing plants, etc. ad infinitum. And I've never found PETA to be too radical about anything. Quite to the contrary, usually. And god forbid we actually make the connection between the food they're eating and the enormous suffering of animals. But I let it go. After all, this was only the second vegan I had met on campus. I wanted to keep on good terms with her.

The next time I encountered this girl, she approached me while I was trying to enjoy a cigarette, and proceeded to barrage me with a monologue about how we shouldn't bring up ethical veganism publicly because all that talk of mass torture and killing is just too damn controversial. Instead, she thought we should focus on the health benefits of veganism because apparently having low cholesterol is something that makes her feel "like, really good" about herself "and stuff". I was so shocked, I only managed to mutter some non-committal remark to the effect of "yeah, well if the group wants to be a cooking club, that's cool," and I ran for the door, fuming. As far as I know, she ran for whatever fucking jam-band bullshit was playing that weekend on campus in her preppy ass shorts and polo shirt.

First, who approaches a chain-smoker to tout the health benefits of veganism? Fucking brilliant. Really. If I gave a damn about my health or anyone else's, I wouldn't have the butt hanging out of my mouth now would I? More importantly, most college students don't give two shits about their cholesterol. And pitching veganism as some fucking fad diet in the ranks with South Beach, Atkins, Weight Watchers or even raw foods is obnoxious as all fuck, and it's dumb to boot. Health food vegans are going to be as committed to veganism as they are to any other diet. I don't think I need to cite studies to tell you that those things never fucking last. And besides, if you're vegan for your cholesterol, there's no reason to get rid of wool, leather, silk, down, honey, gelatin, or even fucking skim milk. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like the people who really go vegan and stick with it do it for primarily ethical reasons, and only secondarily because it can be damn good for you (which I don't deny).

Anyways, I knew the girl was non-confrontational, politically wishy-washy, and not so bright from the start. She even deflected a suggestion on our listserv to start campaign against JCrew given that they sell fur. This campaign would be brilliant on this campus because 98% of the student body shops there. But of course, instead of offering her support, this girl says, "I'm not going to lie: I shop at J. Crew, and I love it. Do I shop for fur at J. Crew? No, I think fur looks weird on people." Does she think she's funny? Because I sure as hell don't.

But she would at least want to have more and better-labeled vegan options at our dining hall, right? I mean, that's basic, non-confrontational, and constructive right? Sadly, no.

A cool vegan prof on our campus who is the advisor for the vegan group was kind enough to write a letter to the head of dining services to tell her that although much improvement has been made, being vegan here is still really difficult. His main critiques of the dining hall were that a.) the vegan food there tends not to be labeled as such, and next to nobody who works there seems to know if we can eat it or not; and 2.) that there simply aren't adequate options for vegans to eat and remain healthy. It was a polite letter, and he got a polite response back, offering to meet with him about it. No problem right?

The cholesterol vegan girl, of course, didn't seem to think so. She chided our advisor for being too hard on the dining workers, even though he contacted an administrator, and was frankly very nice. It was not as if he was berating one of the grossly underpaid dining service workers on campus. Anyways, her response raised the following question for me:

If a vegan group on a college campus doesn't talk about ethics, and it doesn't even push for more vegan options in the dining hall, what in god's name do they fucking do? (answer: nothing)

Uneasy twins

2005-09-17T11:12:00.000-04:00

I've written before about the uncomfortable similarities between the Nazi holocaust industry as Norm Finkelstein outlines it, and the animal holocaust industry a la PETA. After poking around online the other night, I found something interesting on the ADL homepage (that's the Anti-Defamation League, or, Anti-Democracy Legion). See, the ADL views the Nazi holocaust as an untouchable subject, which can't possibly be compared to any other tragedy in all of human existence. Otherwise, we aren't treating it with enough reverence.

That's why PETA got the shaft from the ADL after running this advertisement pictured above, along with a video advertisement juxtaposing pictures of soon-to-be holocaust victims being transported without food or water on trains to their deaths over pictures of soon-to-be hamburgers being transported without food or water on trains to their deaths. Not suprisingly, the ADL didn't like the comparison. They said, "a disturbing development ... has emerged in some animal and environmental activist circles is the use of Holocaust imagery to promote their causes."

The National Director of the ADL writes,

The effort by PETA to compare the deliberate systematic murder of millions of Jews to the issue of animal rights is abhorrent. PETA's effort to seek "approval" for their "Holocaust on Your Plate" campaign is outrageous, offensive and takes chutzpah to new heights.

Rather than deepen our revulsion against what the Nazis did to the Jews, the project will undermine the struggle to understand the Holocaust and to find ways to make sure such catastrophes never happen again.

Abusive treatment of animals should be opposed, but cannot and must not be compared to the Holocaust. The uniqueness of human life is the moral underpinning for those who resisted the hatred of Nazis and others ready to commit genocide even today.

Again, the Nazi holocaust is, as always, not something to be compared to anything else. What a load of Zionist chauvanism. Typical of ADL rhetoric, only 6 million Jews died in the holocaust, not 11 million people including Jews, Communists, Gypsies, Gays, Jevhovah's Witnesses, the mentally ill, Poles, etc. As usual, the "uniqueness of human life" to Zionist fundraisers means "the uniqueness of Jewish life," ignoring total Zionist complicity, and in some cases encouragement, of the holocaust. But I digress.

The irony is overwhelming. The ADL gets to promote its own fundraising with the likes of other pro-Zionist groups, none of which holocaust survivors or their families ever see, but gets mad when PETA steps on its toes using the same tactics to fundraise for their bullshit legislative efforts, none of which will ever actually benefit any non-human animals -- just PETA. The two groups are conjoined in their disgusting exploitation of misery for money, but what makes this fight so irritating is the comparison. Not that it's wrong. Far from it, it's dead-on. The real comparison that needs to be pointed out isn't between human and non-human holocausts, but between groups like the ADL and PETA.

You can read the full ADL piece here and see what they were all in a twist about here.

"As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behaviour towards creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right." Isaac Bashevis Singer

What is "vegan enough"? Or, Does size really matter?

2005-09-15T19:03:00.000-04:00

Did I miss something? I guess I must've.

As of today, I've been privy to a debate I haven't been privy to in quite some time. The argument stemmed from the honey thing. Some people persist in saying that honey is either vegan, doesn't matter, or is "vegan enough," and anyone who says otherwise is making veganism a club, towing/pushing a party line, or an exlcusive elitist.

Sorry, "not vegan enough"? What is this shit? There is vegan and there is not vegan. Honey is not vegan. Know why? If you said it's because honey is an animal product, then you passed preschool. Congrats! And yet, it's wrong to say that people who are "vegan in every other respect except eating honey" are not vegan. Yet, the proposition that they are "vegan in every other way" implies in itself that they *aren't* vegan.

Then the argument becomes diluted by folks who bat around the phrase "vegan enough." For instance, apparently I don't think some people are "vegan enough" because they eat honey. It's not that I don't think they're vegan *enough*, it's that I don't think they're vegan. Period. If they consumed no animal products, including honey, with the exception of milk, would they be vegan? How about "vegan enough"? No! Because milk isn't vegan! It's not even a grey area! Honestly, what the fuck?! It's not like honey is hard to ditch, especially compared to milk, eggs, meat, and what have you. Are people who know better but just continue to eat honey after they've given up everything else simply contrarians at heart even more than the average (and actual) vegan, or are they just stupid?

Here's what I've heard so far in response:

1. Not eating honey makes vegans look extreme. You know what makes vegans look extreme? VEGANISM. Not eating honey at least makes you ETHICALLY CONSISTENT. Oh, and VEGAN.

2. Honey isn't that important in the scheme of things. I posed this question elsewhere, and I'll pose it here too: If cows were the size of bees, would milk not be that important in the scheme of things? Apparently size really does matter, at least to some "vegans."

3. You feed your cat/dog/whatever food with animal (by)products, so you're not any more vegan than someone who eats honey. This is bullshit. Dogs you can feed pretty much whatever and they're fine. This isn't always the case with cats. Cats need what they need to live. Can't help that. As a friend put it best, do you need honey to live? Not unless you're a bee.

4. You're making veganism into a club (i.e., if you say vegans shouldn't eat honey, you're making veganism too exclusive) Really? I thought I was making veganism, well, I dunno, *vegan*. If that's really so much of a problem for some people, perhaps they should reevaluate why they really are vegan? *Is it* so they can be part of a club? Because if it's that much of an issue to give up honey, why are they so annoyed about not being able to really call themselves vegan? I mean, it's not like it's some elite club you need to belong to or something. In reality, it's these same people that make veganism into a club, not actual vegans who don't think people should consume animal products and call themselves vegan.

5. There are more important issues than honey, like animal rights, the environment, etc. This ties into argument No. 2, and it's still bullshit. It's just a smokescreen. Honey, like milk, is from an animal. Honey, like milk, *is* about animal rights. If people don't get that, then they don't get animal rights.

I'm done being apologetic for my stance on things like honey, wool, leather, etc. when so many alternatives exist. It's not about being "vegan enough," it's about being vegan. I don't care if you eat honey. I don't care if you eat ice cream. I wish you wouldn't, but what am I going to do about it? I do care if someone muddies the definition of what veganism is. If anything goes, then what's the point? If anything can be made vegan through a series of mental acrobatics, gymnastics, and contortions of logic, than veganism means nothing. Like I said, there are grey areas. Seeing eye dogs, perhaps. Fuck, eating stuff grown in manure can be a grey area if you want. But honey? It's. just. not. vegan.

Vegan Action?

2005-09-15T14:36:00.000-04:00

Dear Vegans Who Like Sweets,

I've got some sad news for you. Vegan Action is the group responsible in the U.S. for certifying whether or not a product is, in fact, "vegan." For a long time, they would not certify products manufactured on shared equipment. But, as times change (or pockets get greedier), they've decided they could give out more certifications (read: make more money) if they began to certify shared equipment as "vegan."

Does it matter? Well, in the case of chocolate at least, yes, it matters. See, you can't clean chocolate equipment with water. It seizes the chocolate, which just means it fucks everything up. So how is shared chocolate equipment "cleaned"? Well, after the milk chocolate gets run down the line, the producer just starts feeding dark chocolate in. In reality, a lot of "vegan certified" chocolate may contain more than just "trace amounts" of dairy.

But here's where things get really interesting. Sugar. A lot of the white sugar production process involves using (sometimes) bone char, as it's (sometimes) cheaper than charcoal. The difference between this and chocolate is that you don't end up with bits of bone char in your sugar. It's just something most vegans avoid. With chocolate, there's actually milk in it. And Vegan Action will gladly hand out a certification anyway because it's "increasing the number of products out there for vegans to eat." That's all well and good, if what's being certified is vegan. Does this make a bit of fucking sense to anyone?

Here's an idea for Vegan Action: certify things that *are* vegan, and don't certify things that *aren't* vegan. Doesn't that make more sense? Otherwise, why not just go ahead and "vegan certify" milk chocolate too?

The UK is solving this problem by requiring the government to define what constitutes "vegan" in food labeling. And guess what? Shared equipment isn't. If the British government can get it right, why can't Vegan Action?

Co-ops revisisted

2005-09-09T21:06:00.000-04:00

Is it me, or are all co-ops making the transition to being less vegan friendly than regular grocery stores?

I've found this to be the case at my local co-op, and I've heard the same thing from vegans elsewhere. Vegan fare is disappearing from the shelves. What's it being replaced with? Well, organic and "free range" meat, it would seem. So what the fuck is this shit, anyway? Are co-ops suddenly hell bent on waging war against what one would assume to be a small but crucial part of their already small but crucial clientel?

Unfortunately, I don't have the answers. But my mother seems to. Let's rewind, shall we? Last week I went out to dinner with the rents. As usual, it started well and ended in veritable disaster. Somewhere between smooth sailing and our familial interpretive reenactment of the Titanic, my mom brought up free range eggs. At first it sounded like she was posing a rather benign and generic moral question to me, but then I realized that moms don't really do that. At least not mine, anyways. "So, there're these eggs I was reading about from this one local farm. The farmer doesn't use any antibiotics or hormones and the chickens are free range." She paused, and I realized she was waiting for some kind of response from me. "Yeah," says I, "well, most free range isn't very different from factory farming production, actually." Then she made it clear where she was going: "But, would you ever consider..." Would I ever consider eating eggs again if they were produced more "humanely"? "No." Of course, she had to ask why.

Sparing her a graphically unpleasant discussion at a nice pizza joint, I tried to pare down my usual tirade to a simple, "They still slaughter the chickens, mom." Then I got a response I never expected, "Yes, but only after they stop being productive."

In the end, I felt this discussion to be rather symptomatic as to why vegan food is disappearing from the one place we could always depend on having it. Free range is kind, organic is good, and in the end, we can all feel better about killing animals. It's just like PETA's lame-ass efforts to "reform" McDonald's.

Incidentally, I wish my mom's philosophy applied to people. Then we could take out virtually the entire ruling class.

The ice cream vegan

2005-07-31T15:55:00.000-04:00

There are some dumb motherfuckers out there. I guess I've already hashed out honey as much as I'd like to, but there are one group of "vegans" who have been pissing me off more and more-- the so-called "ice cream vegan." For those of you unfamiliar with the term, these are "vegans" who indulge in a little ice cream or cheese pizza now and then. Guess what, fuckers? You're not vegan!

I had an interesting debate at work about this the other day. One of my co-workers was of the mind that even these folks are at least doing something more than your average omni or veggie. And in a way, that's true. But ultimately, that's not what I'm concerned about, at least not in this case. The problem for me is the way they paint a picture of actual vegans as being noncommittal and wishy-washy about their ethics. I can't help but wonder what the fuck is wrong with them, quite honestly. Also, if you know enough to think veganism is a positive thing and you're committed to its basic tenets, then you fucking know better! I don't go around calling myself "model parent" or some such shit, except for when I'm committing the occasional act of blatant child abuse [For the record, no I don't have children. Most of you are probably happy to know this].

The saddest part about this phenomena is its pervasiveness. There's been very few folks I've met who don't, upon finding out I'm vegan, tell me they know someone who is vegan, except they eat pizza with cheese sometimes, Ben & Jerry's ice cream every now and then, and honey basically all the time. If you're vegan, awesome. If you're not there yet, that's okay. But don't call yourself vegan. It hurts the rest of us. Plus, you're a bloody putz** if you do, and you should really just get mangled in a horrible, flaming car wreck, now shouldn't you?

**Mensch-ier?

Book release

2005-07-31T15:51:00.000-04:00

The proprieters of veganfreaks.org have released their first book together. Get your copies while they're hot! Check it out at veganfreak.com.

As for business, new posts should resume at the end of the coming week, and be regular thereafter. Sorry for all the delays. It's been a crazy few weeks. Plus, even I occasionally need time to mock up a new list of things I'm pissed off about.

Update

2005-07-29T15:33:00.000-04:00

I've been away for awhile trying to figure out where I'd like to go with this blog, and also making lots of cookies. There's going to be some changes, so stay tuned. But, I'm still alive. You'll notice a slight change in the blog title. I'll be taking on a cohort to co-author the blog. More to come over the weekend.

I say tomato, you say tamah-toh

2005-07-14T14:00:00.000-04:00

One of the most consistently irritating things about being vegan is the way people are never sure how to pronounce the word. Lots of omnis seem think the word is pronounced "vay-gen." Normally, a gentle correction will work. However, I've run into a few omnis who insist I'm in fact pronouncing the word incorrectly, and they have it right.

Lucky for them I don't own or carry any handguns. Seriously, I think I know how to pronounce my own fucking lifestyle. It would be like if I referred to the Jesus folks as "Chree-stee-ins" or some shit. Really, where do they fucking get off?

To remedy this situation, one of my co-workers once decided, after I corrected her on the pronunciation, that whether or not hers was right, she liked it better. "I like vay-gen. It sounds more Jewish." She was right, and I let her have that one. But a word to any obstinent little twat omnis out there who think they know better: watch yourselves. I may not eat animals, but I have no quams about eating people.

Spam: the least vegan email

2005-07-12T10:36:00.000-04:00

Last year I had the rare opportunity of visiting the Spam museum in Austin, MN. The Hormel factory in Austin was the site of the final death throes of the American labor movement, so I figured I couldn't pass it up. The experience could only be summed up in the three words "fucking creepy, man." But the luncheon "meat" isn't only type of Spam I like to consider thoroughly un-vegan.

The soulless job I'm finishing my final week at consists of answering customer service emails for an electronics company. Every morning my first job is to clean out the spam. Normally there are a few hundred spam emails at the start of the day. My boss insists there are filters in place, but I'm not so sure. Honestly, how many customers send emails with the word "v1agR@" and "c1al!s"? Anyway, after a while I started looking forward to cleaning out the spam for one particular reason: the email titles. Some of them are just fucking hysterically weird, reading like bad beat poetry (although I'm unsure if there's good beat poetry, but whatever). Today I figured I'd share some of my favorites.

Bring out the new you with gastric bypass surgery...
FR: Marvelous It is very interesting, I advise. mars
Vi-ggra is Lousy u7R
Yes...a gas mask is serious business for serious times...
Sir Rodney's Scones
NEW ST0CK:Climb Aboard the Small Cap Gravy Train
Wish you could get laid tonight?
Increase your sperm volume by 500%
Anvanced Penile Medication
How it be. it's me J-girl,,..continual
67% of members got laid
This is what you've been waiting for india
Special pricing on r-xdrugs. To be precise, put the bucks back in your pocket.
I think this is useful to many rustic
1-4 extra inches makes a massive difference
She lovves it
Meet kinky local girls
Have you been seeking fun? You can screw someone today..,..glassy
Re: With clean go blue recto
Do you like to smoke? Do you like music?
Be honest with me, Don't you very often demand talking?
Best software prices. avows whereas
Whats going on, ,my new cam schedule
We've got a powerful lawn tractor with your name on it.
Rolex is not for everyone, it`s for you Deborah
The picture of our Rolexes will attract all the eyeballs. So will our lovvprices.
They vvork as Rolexes. Not at that highprice.
Wearing Rolexes is stylish. Wearing our Rolexes is smart and stylish.
Only time will tell if you can use this melanie
Shed pounds away the Asian Way!
Whats been going on? It's only me Crystal Glass. I really miss you..,...chubby
Why won't you answer me? It's only me Hottie Crystal. I've been missing you

On a separate note, poking around the net this morning I came across a great piece on McSweeney's I thought I'd share with everyone.

Kvetchless

2005-07-11T10:04:00.000-04:00

For once this weekend I did something I rarely do: I dropped off the face of the earth and fucking relaxed. It was nice. It was so nice I've even included pictures with scenic Lake Champlain on the horizon. So today I take a break from kvetching and rants about child sacrifice. For the disappointed, I promise the more bile-filled, negative, occasionally contemplative stuff will resume tomorrow.

The vegan mentor

2005-07-08T09:32:00.000-04:00

Being a vegan mentor is a bit like being Obiwan, winning folks to the light side, the Vegan Order, and training them in the ways of the Soya, except without all the cool shit. Oh, and there's no Vegan Academy on Courescant. Or lightsabres-- sorry, kids. But you do get that sweet-ass hooded robe. Okay, no, you don't. Actually, you get a copy of John Robbin's "Diet for a New America," and a cookbook. But really, this is all it should take.

Every vegetarian-turned-vegan had their own vegan mentor, whether they'd admit it or not. In my case, it was a bit more removed, in the form of vegan-related music. H0wever, with other people, it's normally, well, other people. In this shortish post, I'm going to provide a few tips on how you too can be a goodly vegan mentor.

Traditionally speaking, there are two ways to make more vegans. One is the fun way, but involves paying for the little fuckers' college educations at some point. The other way is mentoring veggies.

When approaching vegetarians about veganism, here's some shit to keep in mind:

1. Don't approach vegetarians about veganism. It will just make them feel pressured.

Okay, so that was really the only tip I had about approaching them. But once they've approached you about veganism (in any capacity), here's my suggestions:

1. Let them ask whatever questions they like, no matter how trite or asinine, and answer them honestly, no matter how much the truth hurts. This means when someone asks, "As a vegan, will I have to be involved in ritual sacrifice of human babies?" you've got an obligation to say, "Yes, and it's going to need to be your first born." Alternately, if someone just asks, "So, what do you eat?" which is a slightly easier question, you're also going to need to tell them the truth-- "Your first born. Or, you know, tofu." These conversations can often happen during meals. This is a good time to invite them to try some of whatever you're eating. If they use objections like, "Um, that's okay, I'm fine with this cheese pizza," be firm. "Look, I don't care if it is your first born, you're being a big goddamned sissy." Or, if you're eating tofu, explain it's not at all bad. Many vegetarians have dabbled in tofu cookery before, and most of them have only made it once. Know why? Because they fucked it up the first time, or just ate plain, raw, silken tofu (shudder). You're job under these circumstances is to show them vegan food is yummers, even if they are a big sissy.

2. Never give them shit about eating dairy, eggs, honey, etc. This won't be productive. Instead, I suggest dosing their animal product food with small amounts of arsenic. This way they can be easily weaned off of them. Of course, the arsenic in small doses will eventually become addictive, and you'll need to continue upping the amount which will eventually kill them, but are you interested in saving animals or not? Or, if you're a big sissy too, you should avoid giving them shit because it will make them uneasy about approaching you. The key to winning people over is being approachable. If you can't be approachable about being vegan, then you might as well not be vegan at all, because you're doing squat to aid the greater cause. The golden rule here: be patient, give gentle reminders.

3. Don't make inordinate promises about the benefits of veganism. It's fine to tell your padwan learner veganism is healthier than vegetarianism, more ethically consistent, and not a difficult switch to make. But don't make promises you can't keep. Attention vegetarians: no matter what anyone tells you, becoming vegan will not make you part of an international crime syndicate, "the family," or the vegan mafia; that is, not unless you really want to get involved with PETA.

4. Your library is their library. Give your unwitting pupil lots of books, literature, and videos about veganism and AR issues. Don't frame it as something they have to examine, rather, just extend the offer. They'll probably take you up on it.

5. When they are ready, help them to construct their first lightsabre as they prepare to strike down their own father in a blaze of well-coreographed swordplay. Fuck, we totally need lightsabres.

6. If you know other vegans, hang out together with your veggie friend. Show them other vegans are out there too, and they're not all as weird as you. Demonstrating a broader base of support will make your little veggie buddy feel more encouraged. The three B's--Bolwing, BBQ, and Bloody child sacrifice--are all great ways to make your "student" feel more welcome in the world of veganism.

7. Don't give them too much too fast. Too much information too fast can break vegetarians. Their minds are fragile, and you'd do well to remember this.

8. Once they make the leap, they will need support. Think of yourself as the training wheels for your new vegan apprentice. Some day they will graduate to a real bike, but not yet. The important thing is helping them to not "cheat." Sometimes new vegans are prone to do this, and while it's not a good sign, it's not a death sentence on their veganism either. In fact, the more you verbally tell them you don't care if they cheat, the more they guilt they will feel. In this case, that's probably a good thing. The important thing they realize is that they aren't "cheating" animals, they're only cheating themselves. Also, new vegans will eat a host of non-vegan things without knowing it. This can result in a lot of guilt, shame, or embarassment when you point out that, say, the soy cheese they bought with the best of intentions contains casein. Reassure them they haven't done anything wrong, and remind them veganism isn't about purity and perfection, it's about doing your best. Most of all, it's a learning process. Even seasoned (no pun intended) vegan veterans make mistakes from time to time. While there's virtually no way around this, though, it doesn't make veganism pointless, and it's important to remind your learner of this point.

If you follow these steps, you'll have a vegan in no time. Actually, that's a lie. It can frequently take years for someone to finally become vegan. But if you're patient, you can get them there. Just be encouraging, supportive, patient. In time, they may even give up their child willingly.

The good, the bad, the vegetarian

2005-07-07T16:55:00.000-04:00

Vegetarians are curious creatures, much more curious than the either the omni or the vegan. To be a vegetarian is to wallow in a perpetual limbo. On one hand, vegetarians seek to reduce animal suffering. I've even seen a few lash out at omnis, without a bit of consideration to the suffering in their milk, eggs, and honey. On the other hand, I've caught a lot of flak from veggies in the past for being too "extreme." This I don't really get. It's not like I'm fucking white water rafting with great white sharks here, I just don't eat animal products. Regardless, vegetarians inhabit a perplexing psychological plane of existence-- they know, but they'll only take it so far. Sometimes this results in guilt that turns into anger at--surprise--vegans.

Being a Leninist and activist, I've encountered a lot of anarchists who are more anti-communist than they are anti-capitalist. Likewise, I've probably encountered more veggies who are more anti-vegan than they are anti-omni. The rest, unfortunately, regail me with asinine rationalizations about how they "love cheese too much," or how they just need that omlet in the morning. Fuck that. For one, that message is always delivered in a patronizing way. For two, I don't give a shit what you eat. You can tell when veggies give you such lame excuses, they do so not to inform you why they're not vegan, but to make themselves feel better about it. Is there anything more pathetic than a repentant veggie? If there is, I can't think of it.

I know this is going to be perceived as me ripping on veggies, and I guess to an extent that's true. Perhaps it's just a little backlash of my own for dealing with all of their bullshit. But you know what? I don't tell veggies I think they're half-assing it, and I don't expect to get labeled as an "extremist" just because I actually chose to do what they know is right.

Ultimately, however, I'm not trying to shit all over vegetarians. After all, I'm sure when they're not busy helping the veal industry they're fine folks. Seriously though, I say this as a former vegetarian myself: vegetarianism is to animal rights as recycling is to the environment. It feels good but at the end of the day it doesn't make a tit's worth of difference. It just doesn't even begin to address the whole problem, let alone the root of it.

Does this mean we should chide and berate veggies? No. Vegetarians are vegans in the making. It may take time, but with proper care and attention, most of them can make it to vegandom and stick to it. The best thing vegetarians can do not only for animals, but for themselves, is to go vegan. It's tough to live a life of total moral/cognitive dissonance. Few things feels better than a bit of ethical consistence in one's life.

Essentially, what I'm saying now will definitely not make more vegans. This is just where I get to bitch, because, well, that's what I do. And what the fuck of it? Anyway, what can be very helpful to vegetarians is to have a vegan mentor, who can guide them through a daunting--but not difficult--transition.

More on vegan mentoring tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Math is the work of the devil

2005-07-07T13:20:00.000-04:00

I was never very good at math. In fact, I never took a math course after my junior year of high school. My math teachers at the time constantly stressed just how handy my developing math skills were, but I didn't care because I hated math. And you know what? I still hate math. It fucking blows. And here's why:

The population of the U.S. between ages 18 and 25 is approximately 26,917,473. Divide that by half and you get 13,458,736. What's 1.5% of that number? 201,881.04. What is that number? That's a rough estimate of the number of vegan women between 18 and 25. In fact, that's a very high estimate, but let's be generous for the sake of argument. Factor in for the number of those that are of the gay persuasion (about 5% 10,094.052), and there's about 191,786.99 straight vegan women between the ages of 18 and 25.

My chances of finding a vegan girl age 18-25 who is at least into guys and possibly cool? This is where my math gets fuzzy, but the answer isn't particularly encouraging either way.

You know what? Fuck math.

It's capitalism, stupid

2005-07-06T11:16:00.000-04:00

If there's one thing you can count on many AR folks for, it's there total inability to see or make the connections between veganism and other struggles for social justice. And when I say "other struggles," I'm actually being a bit misleading. In the end, it's all part of the same struggle.

I have to say I find it fucking unforgivable when AR assholes won't make the leap between animal oppression and other forms-- race, gender, class, etc. I should note I find the reverse to be true as well. The inability on the part of the broader AR world to make these connections speaks to a larger failure of the "social justice" movement in the U.S. Making these connections isn't an optional thing. We either all do it, or we all fail (or rather, we continue failing).

There's a war on, one that's being waged on every front, from the field to the factory, from the shop floor to the killing floor. Strategically, we can fight this war one of two ways: on many fronts, with different special interest groups tackling perceived "separte issues," and merely attacking the symptoms; or, with a unified group attacking the disease itself-- a system of political economy that values profit over all forms of life, and subsequently white over black, male over female, rich over poor, and humans over other animals.

Part of consolidating forces must come from the realization that an injury to one is an injury to all. In the end, it's all part of the class war. At what point do we get our shit together?

Moving targets

2005-07-06T10:23:00.000-04:00

We all get tired of being asked dumb fucking questions about being vegan. Something I've been thinking about lately more and more, however, is how we really have to make ourselves targets. Here's what I mean:

When I first became vegan, I was a militant little fuck. That's not to say I evangelized--I didn't. But I made it known I was vegan through dress, deed, and word, and never backed down when I was challenged about it. As the years went by, I became less the billboard for veganism I had once been after being repeatedly heartbroken by a confused, confounded AR "movement."

Eventually, I slipped into a lull lasting several years in which I did just about zilch to advertise veganism in any way whatsoever. Recently, though, I've been realizing just what a perplexing existence many of us vegans lead: many of us simply want to be left the hell alone by pesky omnis. By the same token, if we care about veganism at all, we need to make ourselves into moving targets for the greater cause. Without being preachy, we need to advertise veganism, if for no other reason that people know we're out there. We're a minority to be sure, but we can be a vocal one. More importantly, if people see us walking around and have no idea we're vegan, then what's to get them thinking about animal rights in the first place? So while the peksy omnis are, well, pesky, that's got to be something we're just willing to put up with for the greater good.

In that sense, I'm speaking to all of the closeted vegans out there: come on out, we need you more than ever. You can let the world know you're vegan without being a vegangelical, and you can be another voice for the voiceless, even if it often seems a lonely voice in the wildnerness.

How now, mad cow?

2005-07-01T14:35:00.000-04:00

We vegans have a few extra things we don't need to worry about that most omnis do-- increased risk of heart disease, cancer, ketosis, etc. Oh, and, and for the guys out there, impotence. Now there's one more thing we don't need to worry about either: mad cow disease! That's right, we'll have the quiet satisfaction of watching our omni acquaintences who used to josh on us for not eating meat suffer from a terminal, crippling dementia as they begin dropping like flies. I for one, intend to enjoy the experience, just as I will invariably enjoy urinating on their freshly-filled grave, wondering to myself, "How's this for an animal product, bee-otch?"

What's truly astonishing, of course, was the level of denial surrounding mad cow, otherwise known as BSE, from the U.S. government and only marginally less surprising, the beef industry. When you feed an animal recycled animal from the same species, guess what you get? Spongiform encephalopathy. It's not like this is top secret shit we're dealing with here; it's been established repeatedly in other countries. It's also been established that BSE jumps species. Oh, yeah, and we can confirm it's been here for at least 12 years, but more likely 30+. So this Fourth of July as I'm getting ragged on at a cook out for not having a big bloody burger, I'll just be able to smile and know that in the end, they'll pay, the fuckers.

You know what? Sometimes things work out all right after all.

Let's not call it stupid, let's just say "Southern"

2005-07-01T10:02:00.000-04:00

"Ya'll, be honest, what do you think of the South?" This was the question I was faced with last month by a new intern at my current place of work. If you couldn't tell from the "ya'll," she's from the South--Louisiana, to be exact.

It's not the first time I've been asked this question. It was, however, the first time I had been asked that question by a Southerner. I hesitated. "Well..." She rightly figured I had Southerners (at least the white ones, anyway) pegged as backwards, bigoted, misogynist, inbred fuckwits. After some assurances this was not in fact true, I must admit I felt a little ashamed.

Then I met her family.

Her last night in town, she insisted we go out for a drink with her mother, sister, and some folks from work. After reluctantly agreeing, we ended up at Manhattan Pizza on Main & Church. Half way into my pint of Blackberry Wheat, the mother begins explaining why her daughters had to attend private school. This should be rich, I thought. But, trying to choke back my preconceptions, I listened; and in retrospect, I probably shouldn't have.

"The public schools are just so violent and drug-ridden," she told us. I felt like I knew where this was going. Then came the big red flag: "Now, I don't mean it the way it sounds, but..." Whenever someone says something, you know what it really means is, "This is exactly what I mean, I just don't want to sound like a total asshole." "Now, I don't want to mean it this way, but it's mostly the black schools."

To illustrate just how violent those schools were, the intern began to relate how she can't even go in "their" neighborhoods, because she'd be raped and killed (her words). At this point I'm about fucking ready to kill someone. But then comes the icing on the conversation. "I know it sounds bad," her mother says, "But it's not like up here. Those neighborhoods are dangerous." One of my co-workers began to interject. Finally, I though, someone would correct her. Unfortunately, I was wrong. They were just jumping on the bandwagon: "You know, really, they're just racist against white people." The mother nodded, as if to signal she knew she was in good company.

Somewhere in the back of my head, a chain reaction began to set off. Are you fucking kidding me? "Racist" against white people? Give me a fucking break! Did someone miss the whole slave trade thing in history class? Jim Crow? Segregation? I realized I would soon be faced with two options not all that abnormal to vegans: ruin everyone's dinner and start shouting, or let it go and find a convenient excuse to leave the table. As one of my bosses happened to be there, I opted for the latter. After all, I figured if I could get out before the cross burning started, I'd be okay.

This raises an interesting moral question: At what point in the dinner conversation is it okay to rain on someone's (or everyone's) parade? "Sorry, meat is really fucked up," or, "Sorry, you're a fucking racist piece of shit and really ought to go get shot." More importantly, at what point in the conversation does one have a moral imperative to speak up (in either case)?

So, what do y'all think?

The incognito vegan

2005-06-30T09:41:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I feel like the vegan in disguise. This is especially true when it comes to the opposite sex. Some strange part of me feels as though were I ever to reveal my true vegan self, I'd be perceived as far too weird to date. I imagine this is something like what Batman, Spiderman, and other such hidden-identity folk feel, who also have women problems in a similar-but-not-so-similar vein.

Like last night. I'm out at my bar with my omni chef housemate (and one of my best friend since high school), and not wearing any overt vegan-messagey type stuff. Once there, we bump into one of his old acquaintences from cuilinary school, who happens to be a very cute punkish (in the real, not Hot Topic way) girl. I don't remember a lot of what happened after that, but needless to say I did not sleep with her. Fine by me, but here's the rest of the story and what I've been chewing on all day since then: She could have been at least a veg*n, but how am I to know? It can be bad to come off too strong about stuff like that, and sometimes my shirts and veganwear probably make me seem a little less approachable than I actually am. But the point of wearing that stuff, ostensibly, is to throw the vegan thing out there, so people don't have to find out later, and no weird omni chicks approach me. Also, it means I don't have to ask, "So, are you a vegetarian/vegan?" (this can kind of be a conversation killer at times).

So here's the bitch of it all: like our incognito comic book friends, am I destined to eek out a loveless existence? Do I advertise the V-factor more, or tone it down? What to do.

Cookies, muthafuckas!

2005-06-30T09:31:00.000-04:00

Update: Thanks to Pleather over at veganfreaks for alerting me to the fact that Liz Lovely was hiring. Thankfully, I got the job, and will now live out the rest of my days (at least for awhile) making delicious vegan artisan cookies. Not sure yet how this will affect my blogging, but I'll find a way to make it work. And now, back to your regularly pissy blog.

Excuses, excuses

2005-06-28T13:52:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I have to make excuses for myself. This week is probably one of those times. It's a hectic week, and I can't guarantee the posts will be coming on a daily basis as they normally do. Hopefully I'll be getting every vegan's dream job. Supposedly, I'll find out about this today, and will be sure to keep folks posted. If I get this gig, bear with me, as it might interrupt the blogging a bit by interfering with my daily internet access (I don't have any from home at the moment). If it gets bad, and if time permits, perhaps some guest bloggers will take center stage. We'll see. Until then, keep checking the smoking vegan for your near-daily dose of raging soya, so I don't have to bust out some of my patented Ve-gan-do on your bitch ass. Because nothing hurts like a celery chop or a flying, roundhouse broccoli kick to the junk.

Pets or slaves?

2005-06-23T11:58:00.000-04:00

Recently, the kindly folks over at veganfreaks posted a response to the recent controversy over the PETA van o’ death. The comments section sparked an interesting discussion. Most interesting of all the comments, I think was one which suggested that the PETA murderers were in fact committing mercy killings, because pet ownership is “slavery.” Here’s the full comment:

PETA is doing the right thing. These animals didn’t suffer – they were euthanized. And they are better off dead than locked up in someone’s house somewhere.

Pet Ownership is Slavery!!! –Deniz

This got me thinking. Let’s parse this statement, shall we? First, “These animals didn’t suffer – they were euthanized.” That seems fairly subjective to me. From most evidence, we know that the chemicals used in lethal injections can cause a significant amount of suffering. But of course, we don’t know for sure, because none of us have ever received a lethal injection. While I wouldn’t say I know for certain they “suffered,” I would say that unnecessary death (the whole reason that many of us are vegan) is a horrific thing, and I would definitely not say that I knew for certain, as Deniz seems to, that they “didn’t suffer.”

Next, “they are better off dead than locked up in someone’s house somewhere.” I guess I’m not so sure on this count either. In fact, I’d say this is a pretty fucking dumb statement. Perfectly healthy animals were better off receiving a lethal injection than being loved and cared for the rest of their perfectly healthy lives? Give me a fucking break. This segues nicely into the final statement, “Pet Ownership is Slavery!!!”

This is something I’ve given a lot of thought in the time I’ve been vegan and an abolitionist, and frankly, “Pet ownership is slavery” is perhaps one of the singularly most retarded, asinine fucking statements I’ve ever heard. Here’s why: if you have a pet, chances are, it’s not out working the fields. In fact, unless you own a sheep, chicken, or other sort of farm animal, chances are it’s not producing anything for you at all. You, having a pet, extract no profit from said pet. There are certainly people who shouldn’t have pets, who abuse or neglect them, but they are a very small minority. In the same respect, there are many people who shouldn’t have children, who abuse or neglect them, but they are a very small minority as well, and this is hardly a justification for a statement such as “Having children is slavery.” Like having a child, having a pet who is loved and cared for is certainly not a form of slavery, and stating otherwise displays an level of total fucking ignorance I can’t begin to comprehend.

In reality, we are all subject to a form of very real slavery in the form of capitalism. People like myself and Deniz are owned by money and our jobs (assuming Deniz is employed), and live a life of guided in nearly every respect by force and coercion. This is something that at least pets don’t have to suffer. Yet I would never suggest that, were I to rent a van, toss Deniz in the back, and give Deniz a lethal injection, that, “Deniz didn’t suffer – Deniz was euthanized, and better off dead than working some day job, having all of his/her labor extracted by a brutal, profit-driven system. Capitalism is slavery!” Then again, perhaps as far as the abolitionist movement is concerned, this might really be a mercy killing after all. Just not for Deniz.

Lastly, let’s get real for a moment. We in the abolitionist movement have some pretty limited resources. While I can’t say that Deniz is definitely not an abolitionist, s/he does seem to be a PETA supporter (so probably not an abolitionist). Regardless, we need to think well and hard about how we allot our extremely limited time and even more greatly limited resources. Factory farming or pet ownership? Fur farming or pet ownership? Animal exploitation or pet ownership? Making more vegans, making connections between animal exploitation and human exploitation, or pet ownership? The fact that this is even debated speaks volumes to just how totally fucked up the AR “movement” really is. Thank you, Deniz, for being a shining fucking example of this, and helping to illustrate a much-needed point.

The Holocaust Industry, PETA-style

2005-06-22T12:41:00.000-04:00

In his groundbreaking book, The Holocaust Industry, Norm Finkelstein outlines his case against major Zionist organizations. Essentially, Finkelstein argues that major American Jewish organizations have turned the Nazi Holocaust into a fundraising machine, absorbing cash in the form of donations and “reparations,” little or none of which survivors of the Holocaust or their families ever see. Rather, this money is re-invested in what Finkelstein terms “the Holocaust industry,” which serves to perpetually enrich Zionist elites while deflecting legitimate criticism of the Israeli “state.” In the end, Finkelstein posits, this hurts world Jewry far more than it helps, and only serves to whip up further anti-Semitism while bolstering support for an apartheid state.

How does this relate to animal rights or veganism?

I’m glad you asked. Aside from the fact that many vegans, including myself, see numerous parallels between the Nazi Holocaust and the animal exploitation industries, the connection in fact runs significantly deeper. PETA and similar “animal rights” organizations, which are in reality incredibly reactionary reform groups, turn the animal holocaust into a fundraising machine, absorbing cash in the form of donations for and endless series of campaigns that accomplish little but talk big. What their campaigns do accomplish is to make people more comfortable eating at McDonald’s, because now they supposedly treat their animals “more humanely.” Just as the links between Zionist leaders and the Nazis is well-established in their strange convergence of interests, so to is there a bizarre symbiotic relationship between groups like PETA and the corporations the purport to be “against.” The animals never see the results of these campaigns because there are no real results. The money from these endless fundraising efforts is reinvested over and over again in a similar holocaust industry—the Animal Holocaust Industry—which serves only to enrich PETA and the animal rights aristocracy, whose elite live quite comfortably, while simultaneously deflecting legitimate criticism of the strategy, theory, and tactics of these organizations. They shut down the opposition. Like the Finkelstein’s Holocaust Industry, in the end, the animal rights/abolitionist cause is hurt by these organizations far more than it is helped, organizations that only seem to be good at making more anti-vegans than vegans.

The animal rights aristocracy has truly struck gold. If the lessons of the Nazi genocide have taught us anything, it’s that nothing makes money like a Holocaust Industry. As Abba Eban once joked, “There’s no business like Shoah (holocaust) business.”

PETA and the merchants of misery are truly a partnership made in Dachau.

Why I will no longer link to PETA

2005-06-21T09:11:00.000-04:00

While I'm sure this is no crushing blow to the behemoth that is PETA, I can't in good conscience keep them in my links anymore. If you follow my blog, you already know I'm not a big fan, but really I just abso-fucking-lutely hate them, and the following links should provide you with sufficient reason why.

PETA is pro-war and sexist.

PETA are fucking murderers.

PETA engage in theatrics that hurt the vegan cause more than help. See their main site, you won't have much of a problem finding exactly what I'm talking about.

PETA engage in pointless reform rather than focusing on important issues and structural change. According to PETA, McDonald's is getting better with its animals, but KFC is getting worse. Are you fucking kidding me?

PETA is prickishly narcassistic, somehow delusional enough to believe that they are the animal rights movement.

I've replaced the PETA links for now with a link to the Vegan Society UK. For some reason there appears to be no Vegan Society U.S., which I suspect has a bit to do with PETA.

PETA are not the animal rights movement, they are a cancer on it.

Ex-smokers, ex-vegans, ex-girlfriends

2005-06-21T08:16:00.000-04:00

What do all three have in common? They are each a form of fucking G-dless, irritating apostate. And while I find all three really abhorrent, I'm going to focus primarily on the first two because they get under my skin the most, and frankly--given my track record with "the ladies"--I also have a lot more experience with the first two.

Ex-smokers and ex-vegans share a lot in common. They both mouth-up at really inopportune moments. They both love telling you how much "healthier" they are now than they used to be. They both look down their noses at you for not being ex-smokers or ex-vegans as well. They both engage in relentless, highly ritualized spousal abuse, and also, if that's not enough, I'm pretty sure they both hate fuzzy kittens (this last one goes for the ex-girlfriends as well).

Yes, like ex-smokers, whenever I go out there always seems to be an ex-vegan that crops up too. They are intent on ruining any fun that I have, usually by peppering me with fucking obnoxious quasi-questions and statements, like "I don't get how you can do it," and, "I used to be vegan. But I just couldn't do the cheese thing." "I couldn't be healthy when I was eating like that." Similarly, I catch flak from ex-smokers like, "I feel so much healthier now," "You know you really should quit," and then they do retarded shit like waving their hand in front of their face when I walk back into a room from having a butt because they "can't stand" that smell. Yeah, well fuck you assholes. Ex-vegan? All that means to me is you never really were vegan in the first place. Ex-smoker? Fine. Same goes for you. But don't lecture me about it, and don't act like a two-year-old with your dumbass gestures. All it makes me want to do is smoke more, but without the added courtesy of not doing it around you. Stop evangelizing like a bunch of goddamned scientologists.

The worst, of course, is someone who is both an "ex-vegan" and an ex-smoker. This is a rare breed of nuisance, and hopefully they will simply become extinct with the increasingly rapid global climate shift, or some shit like that. But if you think either one is irritating on their own, you should see these two in tandom. You get two apostates for the price of one. They have something to say about everything; yet, most of what comes out of their mouth is a whole lot of fucking nothing. This particular group of annoyances should really be shipped off en masse to an island colony where they can patiently await the coming tactical nuclear strike whilst irritating the shit out of each other.

To the ex-smokers and the "ex-vegans," I have but one thing to say: quitting is for quitters. Bitches. And please, stop the relenteless, highly ritualized spousal abuse.

Oh, and as for the ex-girlfriends-- well, I'll leave them to their goosestepping, fuzzy-kitten-hating/stomping, gestapo-like ways.

In local news, area vegan attends clambake-themed wedding

2005-06-20T15:23:00.000-04:00

Yes, that was me. This last weekend I had the honor of attending the beautiful wedding celebration of two very dear friends of mine. The kind omnis that they are, they included a vegan menu option (vegan eggplant parm) on the wedding invite. There was also a vegetarian option (regular eggplant parm), and the omni meal—lobster. Needless to say I checked off the vegan option on the RSVP. Unfortunately, the catering company that made the initial offer to have a vegan meal reneged on the spot. Even some of the vegetarians were left, like me, drinking their dinner from the open bar.

That in itself wasn’t really so bad. After all, I was there for my friends, not the food. Of course, the open bar also helped (I was informed upon departing later in the night, by the bartenders, that I had single-handedly consumed more alcohol than anyone else at the wedding, which happened to be a mostly Irish wedding if you need some kind of reference point). No, what killed me was the lobster.

What’s strange is that I grew up spending vacation time in the summer at my grandparent’s place in Orient Point, Long Island. My step-grandfather was a vegetable farmer by trade, but an avid seafood eater by hobby. We used to go clamming together, and the one thing I always looked forward to on every trip was the lobster. So when I heard lobster was the entrée, I figured, “Eh. I can deal with that.” Fuck, I’ve been around plenty of people eating lobster before. When they finally brought them out, right after the clam chowder and mussels, it dawned on me that I had never been around a hundred people eating lobsters. In a tent. Did I mention we were in a tent? Oh, and it was 85 degrees outside. Truthfully, I left the tent when the mussels came out. The smell was—no offense to my gracious hosts—absolutely horrendous, at least to a vegan. Perhaps most amusing of all was that the stench was bad enough to drive several vegetarians out of the tent as well. (My point here is not to knock the veggies, just that if it’s so offensive to them, imagine the vegan reaction).

In an effort to avoid thinking too much about food, I lit up and rang my personal vegan support network on my cell (I should say here that I really loathe cell phones). Being able to kvetch about it helped enormously, and kept the day a happy and thoroughly alcohol-drenched day for me, the way wedding celebrations are supposed to be. But there’s something about boiling an animal to death that makes me a bit queasy. If they had all been eating steak or some shit, I’m sure it would have been more tolerable. The stench isn’t nearly as strong. But there’s something about the smell of seafood that I just can’t tolerate any longer. Perhaps in some psychological way it subtly reminds me of some omni girls I used to date. But more than that, I think it’s mostly the whole boiling thing, which is fucking atrocious.

My friend Sophia came out to offer me some corn on the cob and potatoes, which was very sweet of her, and a lot of effort. She had to harass the hell out of the caterers. This actually made my heart sink a little more, because I had to inform her later that they had been boiled with the lobster, as was obvious the moment I peeled back the husk from the corn. The darling that she is, she understood. But fuck if I didn’t feel like a real asshole at that point. I had thought of simply dumping the plate of food she brought in the rhododendrons, but figured that the only honest thing to do was thank her and politely say that while I appreciated the effort more than she will ever know, I just couldn’t eat it.

Once the main course was over, and the smell had largely wafted out of the tent, I was able to return for my smokes and stop bumming off of my friends and old college advisor. And, of course, I got more beer. And whiskey. Did I mention the whiskey? There was a lot of it. That I drank.

The day taught me several important lessons: 1. Never fucking trust a fucking omni.

Okay, I’m just kidding. Everyone—minus the catering company—did their best to be far more accommodating than necessary. But I did learn a few things. 1. Always bring some food with you anywhere you’re going to eat, no matter how reassured you’ve been that there will be vegan options. 2. While dry-roast and honey-roasted peanuts are not vegan (though there are some exceptions with the dry-roast), mixed bar nuts are not only vegan, but really delicious with any form of alcohol. 3. Cigarettes and cigars are not food, but they’ll do in a pinch. 4. Unlike funerals, at weddings people notice when you’re not eating.

Next wedding, I’ll be prepared.

"But Hitler was a vegetarian..."

2005-06-17T11:40:00.000-04:00

Vegans get a lot of dumb comments thrown their way by omnis with nothing better to do than "challenge" their veganism. The most obnoxious part of this is the way they seem to think they are the first person to think of this or that particular one. The most obnoxious, and my favorite, is being informed that "Hitler was a vegetarian, you know."

I've lost count of the number of times I've heard this one. On a fundamental level, I'm not sure what the fuck this is supposed to mean. A good answer is, "So what?" Hitler, on several occasions, affirmed that he was a Catholic. Do I try to "challenge" Catholics by saying, "Hitler was a Catholic, you know." Could one seriously imply that because Hitler professed to be Catholic that there is some sinister link bewtween Catholicism and Nazism, and that all Catholics are Nazis.

Another good answer, of course, is that Hitler was not a vegetarian. Later in life his doctor put him on a largely vegetarian diet to help with some gas problems, but Hitler enjoyed a variety of foods, such as Bavarian sausage, ham, and stuffed pigeon, among other things. His person cook noted, "I do not mean to spoil your appetite for stuffed squab [pigeon], but you might be interested ot know that it was a great favorite with Mr. Hitler..."

Sometimes these same assholes also claim that the Nazi regime banned vivisection, and hence, opposing animal testing is also akin in some warped way to support for Nazism. Aside from the monumentally flawed leap in logic necessary to make a statement like this, it should be noted that the Nazis never banned vivisection. Author John Vyvyan writes, "The experiments made on prisoners were many and diverse, but they had one thing in common: all were in continuation of or complementary to, experiments on animals."

On the flipside, I don't think any vivisectionist is very different from Josef Mengele, and I don't see factory farming and the animal exploitation/murder industries as particularly different from the labor and death camps that dotted the Polish landscape prior to and during World War II. But you know what? Whether you agree with it or not, at least that's substantive.

Slow drivers, stupid drivers, Connecticut drivers

2005-06-16T15:44:00.000-04:00

What the fuck is wrong with you? Why do you drive so slowly? I have to get to work! Do you not work? Are you just joy-riding during rush hour? Give me a fucking break! Just let me pass! Oh, thanks a lot asshole. Thanks. Nice turn signal-- yeah, you know, the one you didn't use. Why don't you look at the road instead of gabbing on your goddamn cell phone, you fucking schmuck! If you make me miss this red light, I swear to god, I will abandon work, follow your car to its destination, and beat the ever-living piss out of you. I swear. No, I promise. Oh, what's that? "W" stands for "Women"? I thought it stood for "Wanker," you H2-driving blueblood piece of shit. If only I had a handgun in my glove compartment right now. If only. Have fun rolling when you try to get off the interstate. And while you're at it, thanks for cutting me off. I hope that's your first-born in the back, so when I drive by your mangled, firey car wreck, I can laugh. That's right-- laugh, motherfucker.

That's me, smoldering, on the way to work every morning-- but toned down a bit for the kids. (They have sensitive minds.)

If you're anything like me, then bad drivers piss you off more than just about anything else in the entire world. I don't know where they come from (okay, not true--they come mostly from Connecticut), how they breed, or why they are allowed to exist, but for some cruel reason I will never understand, they are.

It's funny how accute one's sense of how other drivers will behave becomes after working a job requiring you to battle morning traffic, let alone evening traffic. You can predict things. Example: I'm driving to work yesterday morning. I pull up to an intersection in the left-most left turn lane. In front of me is a youngish guy driving a Subaru. To his right, in the right-most left turn lane, is big ass pickup truck. Behind the truck, to my immediate right, is a van. Behind me is a really expensive audi with a middle-aged guy driving it. Before the light goes green, I know how it's all going to go down.

The guy in front of me is going to go kind of slowish, but he'll probably beat the pickup truck because he's making a tighter turn, which will be good for me because I'm behind him. Ideally, I'll need to pass the pickup truck. The van isn't going to be a problem, because people in vans drive slowly. The guy behind me? Well, he's kind of the wild card, isn't he? You can never tell with middle-aged single guys driving really nice sports cars. Some drive like grannies, some like drunk 17-year-olds.

Of course, my mental bet was right on the money in the case of each car/driver, except the Audi guy, who doesn't really count anyway since he's behind me, and hey, he was the wild card.

I don't fuck around on the road. I wouldn't call it road rage, just the desire not to be stuck behind a bunch of pokey assholes who seem to have no idea where they're going, as they drift blithely from one lane to another, don't use signals, cut me off, drive 10 mph under the speed limit, etc.

Just thinking about it all makes me livid. At least after the ride from work I get whiskey. (Yes, *after* I'm done driving, not while).

I may be vegan, but I still hate pigs

2005-06-16T15:29:00.000-04:00

Before you get up in arms-- no, I don't mean the loveable, treyf little squealers. In this case, I most definitely mean the police.

Thankfully, most of my friends have come around a bit from the "Officer Friendly" image they grew up with about the five-oh. For those who haven't, I try, as with veganism, to avoid the issue with them. I also try to avoid going to the bar with them, as I have a small habit of yelling at and/or berating the Klan in blue when I'm drunk and they're "working the beat" (read: harassing and manhandling black kids).

For some reason a lot of folks think the police are some benign neutral force, and stand between a world of chaos and, well, the rest of us. The world's first "police force" was started in Britain. Their purpose? To break strikes. Unfortunately, they had a tendency to join the strikers. In the end, the British government decided to give them uniforms adorned with copper buttons-- hence the nickname "coppers" or "cops."

The pigs serve a very specific interest: they are the frontlines of the armed wing of the state apparatus, whose purpose is to protect the wealth and property of the ruling class and to brutalize workers (and especially fuck up black and Latin workers).

This is why pork really is "the other white meat." Just not the kind you find your grocery store. It's also why pigs are totally non-vegan.

Vegan dualism

2005-06-15T09:56:00.000-04:00

Inside us all, we are governed by two vegans: the pragmatic vegan, and the real vegan. The real vegan is who we are at heart; the pragmatic vegan is the way we interface with the rest of the world (omnivores and vegetarians, family and friends), and requires a very large “sense of humor” and a readiness to laugh at oneself.

What determines on an individual basis which vegan comes out the most, and when? For some of us, the world sees the pragmatic vegan in us more, while for others, it is the real vegan that manifests itself publicly. Let’s look at an example.

You’re out eating at a restaurant with a group of friends, and maybe even some of their acquaintances as well, who you don’t really know. One of the acquaintances notices you’re the only one at the table ordering the one tofu dish on the menu. “Oh, are you vegetarian?” they politely inquire. As much as you just want to eat your grilled tofu in peace and quiet, at this point both the pragmatic and the real vegan force the response, “No, actually, I’m vegan.” This, as usual, opens the whole can of worms. But how the conversation proceeds is largely up to you; by which I mean it is largely up to which of the vegans inside us governs you more.

If you are more apt to default to the pragmatic vegan in such a situation, the conversation will continue something like this: “Which means..?” “Which means I don’t eat, wear or use anything made of or containing animal products or byproducts.” “So you don’t eat eggs? Or cheese?” “Yep.” “Now, why do you do that?” “I just think that the dairy and egg industries are inextricably linked with meat production.” “Oh, well, I hope it doesn’t bother you that I’m eating meat right in front of you.” You just smile. If the inquiries continue, the pragmatic you will likely end up saying something like, “In all honesty, you probably don’t want to get into this while we’re eating.”

How would the real vegan inside handle this situation? Let’s have a look:

“Which means..?” “Which means I don’t eat, wear or use anything made of or containing animal products or byproducts.” “So you don’t eat eggs? Or cheese?” “No, do you?” “Well, yes, I mean, it’s natural.” “Well, not really. Would you drink another person’s breast milk? I mean that’s just fucking gross.” “So why are you vegan, then?” “You can’t separate out the meat and dairy and egg industries. Each one fuels the other.” “But cows need to be milked.” (This is wear you reach under the table and make sure there is already a bullet in the chamber the handgun that the real vegan always carries around.) “Actually, that milk is made for the calves. It’s not like cows just magically produce milk. They have to get knocked up by a machine first—i.e., raped. Want to know what happens those calves, by the way? Veal.” “Oh, well I hope it doesn’t bother you that I’m eating meat right in front of you.” “Not really. But it should bother you. The chicken in that curry? That thing probably lived in a battery cage for its whole life—that is, right after it had its beak chopped off.” Noting the looks of puzzlement on the inquisitors face, you add, “Yeah, they have to ‘de-beak’ them, otherwise they tend to cannibalize each other when forced into such small spaces. They go insane. That, and the battery process screws up their natural pecking order.”

At this point the person asking the questions is probably starting to get a little uncomfortable. The real vegan smells blood, and moves in for the kill.

“Yeah. Their feet get crippled too, because they are wrapped around the wire floors of the cages. Did I mention the cages are stacked? Yep. Those birds shit all over each other.” As the color begins to drain from the face of your new friend, and you can tell they suddenly aren’t so hungry, the real vegan inside keeps going. “Also, they shoot them up with all sorts of shit. Ever wonder why the chicken you buy in the supermarket has that ‘healthy yellow’ color? That’s because the get injected with yellow dye. No, really. They inject them with yellow dye to enhance the appealing ‘color’ of their dead flesh, and to make the yolk in their eggs brighter. Of course, that’s not all. They shoot them full of antibiotic cocktails too, which is half of the reason the penicillin you took last time you had an ear infection didn’t seem to work quite as well as it used to.” You pause and smile. Now the real fun begins.

“So then, if they can unwrap the chickens’ crippled legs from around the battery cage floors—the feet start to actually grow around the wire, you see—they take the chickens by the legs, strap them upside down onto a conveyor, and dunk them in a ‘stun tank,’ which is a euphemism for electrified water. A lot of times they miss the tank, or it just doesn’t work, although I’m not sure which is worse. Either way it doesn’t matter much, because then the conveyor takes them by a row of nice folks with knives that slice their throats wide open. And man, you should see the wall of the kill floor, the one behind the conveyor—covered in blood. I mean blood everywhere. The whole system is really more efficient than the Nazi Holocaust.” “So you’re calling me a Nazi now?” “No, I mean the Nazis didn’t eat the dead bodies, they just burned them.”

By now, the friend—if they’re still even at the table—is probably shouting and waving their arms—“Stop, stop, I don’t want to know this shit!” “Yeah, well, if you don’t want to know then you probably shouldn’t be eating it, should you, asshole?” And really, I don’t feel bad when I unleash the real vegan, because frankly, some of these seemingly innocent fuckwits deserve it.

I have been in this situation countless times, as have most vegans. I’ve also played it from both angles—the real vegan, and the pragmatic vegan. Sometimes you get to choose your path, deciding which vegan you’ll let loose. Other times, one will just come on out almost instinctually. My question to you, dear readers, is which vegan in you comes out more? Let me know in the comments section, and be sure to include lots of juicy stories and/or conversation.

Honey: still not vegan, assholes

2005-06-14T14:37:00.000-04:00

I have a running list of topics I keep. This one bumped a few others, that piss me off slightly less, out of the way.

It began yesterday when I was looking for a vegan recipe for challah. For those of you unfamiliar, challah is a Jewish bread that contains lots of eggs, buttermilk, and honey. The first recipe I found contained two tablespoons of—you guessed it—honey. So I pose the question: what the fuck is wrong with these assholes, anyway?

Some vegans refer to this as the “honey debate.” This would be acceptable were there a debate to be had. Unfortunately, there is not. Let’s be clear about it: HONEY COMES FROM AN ANIMAL. VEGANS DO NOT EAT ANIMAL PRODUCTS OR BYPRODUCTS. Therefore, HONEY IS DEFINITELY NOT FUCKING VEGAN, JAGOFF. Saying you’re a vegan that eats honey is like saying you’re a vegetarian that eats fish. More simply, it’s no different from someone that says “I’m vegan, but I still drink milk sometimes.” There’s a word for that sort of thing—Horseshit. Although perhaps that’s an unfair label, because at least horse shit is technically vegan, as the animal is not “forced” to produce it, and does nothing with it. That said, I cannot think of a better word.

Of course, it didn’t really begin yesterday. This is something I’ve encountered repeatedly. Local over-priced B-town hippie eatery Stone Soup specializes in making vegan goodies. They even go so far as to list the ingredients below on the name placards for each tray of treats. Once upon I time, I moseyed in, eyed some desert items, and lo and behold, one of them was labeled “vegan,” but also contained honey.

For the doubtful who lack an understanding of basic biology or entomology, here’s how it breaks down: bees are animals, feel pain, and produce the honey for themselves to eat. There is little difference between the consumption of honey and the consumption of milk. If someone calls themselves a “vegan” and still eats honey because bees are not cute huggable animals, they are no better than the folks who would not eat their pet kitten, yet has no issue eating a “stupid chicken.”

For the extremely mentally impaired, deeper explanations of why honey is not vegan can be found at:

http://www.vegetus.org/honey/honey.htm

and

http://www.vegansociety.com/html/animals/exploitation/bees.php

However, if one is “vegan” but deeply committed to honey, I suspect only repeated sessions of electroconvulsive therapy or a bat to the head will suffice to drive the point home. Consumption of honey violates the most basic tenet of veganism, that animals are not simply ours to use as we see fit. If you feel some bizarre need to eat honey despite the vast number of alternatives—golden syrup, maple syrup, agave nectar—then whatever. Fine. Just do the rest of us a favor and don’t call yourself “vegan.” It only muddies the definition of “veganism” while solidifying the definition of “dumbest motherfucker alive”—you.

On a related but less angry note, is it vegan to call your significant other "honey" or "hon"? I think it is, so long as it's spelled "hunney," or "hun," not that I have an S.O. But it's surely less awkward than saying "Agave nectar, can you turn out the lights before you come to bed," or "I love you too, golden syrup, now go mow the fucking lawn." Do let me know what you think about it, though.

Looking for love, among other things: The Single Vegan

2005-06-13T13:16:00.000-04:00

I’m vegan and single.

No, this isn’t an invite for comments asking to meet up or date (although if you are a cute, smoking vegan female, age 21-27ish—being Semitic can be a plus as well, but certainly not necessary—then do leave a comment or email me. No psychotics with anger management problems, please). Rather it’s my way of introducing the shittiest combination of adjectives on Hashem’s green earth.

Are you an omni? Think you’ve got it bad? Try taking all the shitty awkwardness, stupidity, and horror of what dating is already like for everyone else, and then add being vegan to the mix. To omnis and vegetarians alike, that probably doesn’t sound like a big deal. But that’s because you’re not vegan. Allow me to expound.

I've been vegan for a pretty damn long while (about six-and-a-half years). It's not something I ever think about on a day-to-day basis anymore, except when I'm blogging. It's almost never an issue anymore, minus the typical bullshit even veteran vegans get, except when it comes to dating. The, suddenly, it's a big fucking issue.

Any given night you’ll find me in one bar or another. Of course I have my favorite***, but I like to circulate as well. Truth be told, bars are not the greatest place to meet prospective dates, but there’s something about a woman that likes her whiskey that I find irresistible. Chances that this same woman will be vegan? Let’s put it this way: there’s probably a better chance she’s been struck by lightning and met the pope (which pope? I’ll leave that up to you, dear reader).

Why does it matter whether or not she’s vegan?

While I don’t have the most amazing luck with women—the goodly proprietors of veganfreaks.org can attest to this, as could my own mother, I suspect—I’ve been around enough to learn a few things.

Things I’ve Learned:

Omni chicks just don’t get it. Omni girls don’t get the vegan thing. You become an oddity at worst, and fetishized at best for your veganism. Worse yet is meeting omnis that “used to be” veg*n. They are just fucking obnoxious.

Omni women smell bad. Yes, up top and down below, omni women are, shall we say, unpleasant in the fragrance department. I never used to believe this until dating a few omni girls, and nearly across the board I found this to be the case. I know it sounds bad, but what the fuck ever, it’s the truth. It’s probably trite, but if you’re vegan and you’ve dated omnis, you probably know this to be true as well. Omni chicks are totally fucking treyf.

Vegetarian women can be converted. I don’t actively recruit for the Church of Veganism, and especially not in relationships. But I have dated a couple of veggie girls for a while, both of whom eventually just became vegan over the course of the respective relationships. This isn’t a bad thing, then; just something I’ve learned. Here’s a bad thing though: Most veggies dislike/hate/feel uncomfortable around Vegans. That’s because veggies subconsciously feel like they’re half-assing it when they are around vegans, and why they are often more hostile to us than even the most meat-loving omni. At least, that’s how I rationalize their juvenile bullshit to which I am frequently subjected.

Many vegans are hippies, trustafarians, or some other sort of ass-chapping personality type. I hate jam bands. I especially hate Phish. With scant exceptions, dreads are not meant for white people (I say this as an ex-dreadhead). Bob Marley is okay as background music at the Caribbean restaurant, but I can’t really listen to much music that glorifies psychotics like Haile Selassie. I don’t have a Ben & Jerry’s bumper sticker that reads, “If it’s not fun, why do it?” I am not really that into Foucault, patchouli, cocaine, white water rafting, hiking and camping, pacifism, Zion or Zionism, the Green Party, Gandhi, knitting circles, yoga, realigning my chakras, going to that sand mandala showing, or freeing Tibet (i.e., I’m not quite that “down” with feudal theocracies). Sorry.

Even if you meet a vegan, there’s no guarantee things will work, or that they will even like you. Most of my omni friends worry they’ll never meet that special someone. On the off chance that I even meet another vegan—and you’d think in B-town it wouldn’t be that hard, but it is—there is an excellent chance that things will not work anyway. That’s because things like personality, looks, and all the other qualifiers that omnis have, come into play right after someone passes the V-test. This is perhaps the ultimately shitty part of being vegan and single: knowing that even if by some stretch of the imagination you meet some other cute vegan, they may not even like you. And even if they do, there’s an even better chance that things will just not work. Go ahead and call me pessimistic. Then again, I’d rather be pleasantly surprised when my pesimism (I call it “pragmatism,” but whatever) is proved wrong, than be an optimist and be surprised by constant disappointment.

Sure, there’s plenty of other things I’ve learned when it comes to being vegan and single, but for this blog’s purpose, these are probably the biggest. Or at least, they’re what I feel like writing about at the moment.

I realize that this stuff is probably a little different for vegan women seeking vegan guys, or vegan gay men seeking vegan gay men. Feel free to add/suggest/modify or just kvetch about the stuff I’ve left out in the comments section.

But where does this leave all the vegan singles? Are we doomed to online dating? Or attending hippy parties that a friend invites us along to, in hopes that some other non-hippy vegan will also be there, thinking the same thing?

Unfortunately, I don’t have all the answers. In fact, I don’t have most of the answers. But seriously, what the fuck?! It all gets a little tiring after a while. The dietary aspects of veganism are really quite easy. And Lord knows, the clothing thing ain’t that rough either. But dating? I’d probably have more luck finding gold bullion out there on the beach with all the metal-detector-wielding octogenarians than I would finding a decent girl out there (let alone a vegan one) to waste life with.

Again, I’m not sure where all of this leaves me, or where it leaves you other vegan singles out there, but chances are it’s nowhere good. I'll have more thoughts on this to come, but in the meantime, what say you vegan singles out there?

(On a separate note, Happy Shavuot, and thanks to my BFFs over at veganfreaks for the shout out. I suspected as much had occured when I noticed there were suddenly comments on tsv).

***JP's on Main Street. Any cute vegan B-town girls out there reading this? Can I buy you a whiskey? Pabst? Fallafel with tahini at KKD? Watch some Mr. Show episodes? Just look for the Marxist pins I'm always wearing. I'm not hard to miss.

The PETA conundrum

2005-06-10T14:06:00.000-04:00

Does PETA do more to help or hurt the cause of animal rights? It’s a hard question, and there is no easy answer, at least not so far as I can see. Nevertheless, it’s one that needs to be addressed.

PETA has done some great things, their undercover video exposés of factory farms, laboratories, and fur farms being among the most notable. These documentaries are hard-hitting and to-the-point. These videos expose the horrors of animal oppression, and make great agit-prop. They are, in this vegan’s opinion, what PETA is good at.

Then there’s the folks in giant chicken costumes picketing in front of KFC. The more theatrical aspect of PETA’s work represents their vegangelical side, and makes it nearly impossible for anyone to actually take the animal rights movement seriously. If it had been for PETA, I probably would never have gone vegan, if only for my utter resentment of silly, stupid tactics like this.

Maybe it’s just me, but when PETA makes Bread & Puppet Theater look like the Weather Underground, there is something seriously fucked a’brewin’. How are we supposed to be taken seriously with this bullshit? It reflects poorly on all vegans, and even vegetarians (not that I really give much of a fuck about the lacto-ovos, since they seem to hate vegans more than most omnis, but not even they deserve some of the shit PETA pulls).

Ingrid Newkirk, I beg of you: in the interest of ever winning anyone to veganism, please cut the kid shit.

And while we’re on the subject, what’s with these lame-ass campaigns to make KFC, or McDonald’s, or whoever the corporate bad-guy-animal-abuser-of-the-moment is, simply “reform” how they slaughter and abuse their food animals? Are you fucking nuts, Ingrid? Should we all sleep better at night because KFC might make sure their nuggets-to-be get a dunkeroo in the ol’ (and oh-so-humane) stun tank before they get their throats cut while they’re still alive? Why does PETA focus on making the torture more humane as opposed to just fighting tooth and nail to stop it? Do you think the inmates of Birkenau would have died just a little happier if the Zyklon-B was mint-scented?

But that’s PETA. They put out a good video every once or twice a year, and the rest of their time and money they dump into ridiculous theatrics that only push potential veggies away, and campaigns to make the massacre somehow more “humane.” With friends like PETA, who needs McDonald’s?

Huh; maybe it’s not such a conundrum after all.

Cheap beer & slumming it: The Alcoholic Vegan

2005-06-09T17:12:00.000-04:00

I’m not going to lie about it. I like cheap beer. Beast, Nasty, Old Mil, and the like. They’re all okay. But nothing beats the heat for me like a nice, cold Pabst Blue Ribbon. Because I’m not just a smokin’ vegan. I’m also an alcoholic one. Well, that’s what my friends say. But what do they know? Fuck those assholes. I just like alcohol, that’s all. Forties, cans, bottles, carbonated, whiskey, whatever. Anything that’s not tequila is great. Anyway, let’s talk about why I love Pabst before moving on to the angry rant portion of my post.

Pabst. It’s cold. It’s delicious. It’s even delicious when it’s not cold. It comes in bottles, it comes in cans, and it comes in pint cans (which can’t be beat). Best of all? It’s union-made. Second-best of all? I can totally afford it.

This raises a question: if I could afford better beer, would I drink it? Yes. Well, no. Because if I could afford better beer, then I’d probably just buy whiskey instead. But in theory, yes, I would ditch the Pabst in favor of Lefe, or Long Trail, or Blue Moon, or Magic Hat, or Negro Modelo, or whatever. So it kills me when I go to bars and see the college kids slumming it on cheap beer because they think being without money (or “sin dinero” as my Hispanic friends say) is the next big fashion statement.

I don’t know how it is in other college towns, but when did Schlitz become cool? I wouldn’t even drink that shit! I’d call it dog piss, but that would be unfair to the dog it came from. Not only that, but when did all these donkeyfucking nitwits from Connecticut decide it was “hip” to drop $3.50 at the bar on a can of the junk?

In the end, it amounts to mockery. They could afford better beer, and they don’t abstain from it at the bar because they’re being frugal. They just think it’s fun to be “poor” for a night. Walk into any bar in the town, and it’s easy enough to pick out who’s drinking the Pabst because that’s what they can afford (and as such, they stand by it as “their” beer), and the dickweeds that are just out for a night on the town before driving back to campus with their absurdly attractive girlfriends in their cush out-of-state suvees.

God help them that by the time I start getting really riled about this, it’s usually after drinking a bunch of Pabst and not a bunch of Jack or Jim. Because the minute I hear some bitchy-ass frat boy holler at the bar tender he gives two shits about, “Yo, gimme a pee-bee-arr,” I want to smack him in the back of the fucking head. First of all, it’s a Pabst. If you’re feeling formal, it’s a Pabst Blue Ribbon. It’s a beer, not an acronym. Second of all, don’t fuck with drunk vegans. Some of us have a lot of pent up aggression, and I, in particular, don’t deal well with the ubermenschen slumming it. And last of all, if you want to slum it in a yuppie bar, fine. But keep it there. Don’t take that shit into the townie bars. We don’t go to your bars for a reason: you. So stay the fuck out of ours, and find a new place to drink your Schlitz.

Where (some) vegans graze

2005-06-08T13:44:00.000-04:00

If you’re vegan then you’ve been inside them. And if you’ve been in one, you’ve been in all. They smell exactly the same. Items are located by shelf in approximately the same array in each. The staffers are alike. You reach for the scoop in the large-flake nutritional yeast bin as the air conditioning blasts above you. You glance askew at the dreadlocked trustafarian several feet away, loading up on granola or muesli. You are overwhelmed by the urge to kill (or, that might just be me). You have entered The Co-op.

What’s my gripe with co-ops? After all, they serve a purpose. Ostensibly they provide local producers with more equitable prices for their goods, the items on the shelves are fairly priced, and they are an alternative to big chain stores.

But that’s not what I see when I make one of my oh-so-rare trips to co-ops and health food stores to buy a bag of nutritional yeast or vegan shampoo. Increasingly, co-ops mirror big chain grocery stores in almost every aspect, from size to selection of products to their corporate “ethic.” Our local co-op actually fought tooth and nail against the (ultimately successful) unionization of its workforce.

One aspect in which they still differ from the big grocery stores is in the area of pricing. They cost infinitely more. How the fuck am I supposed to actually buy all my groceries at the co-op when the markup on goods is almost twice that of a regular grocer? And more importantly, why would I want to include myself as part of the dubiously superior clientele that would sooner eat a hamburger than lower themselves to shop where (gasp) poor people shop. It doesn’t take a Marxist to figure out that co-ops and similar grocers are about as bourgie as it gets.

Don’t get me wrong. I love to eat organic stuff when I can get it. I’m not a crunchy type, but god do I fucking loathe GM frankenfood corporate bullshit. The problem is, shopping at a co-op is a class privilege and most of the assholes that shop at them (note, not all co-op shoppers are assholes) don’t understand the class nature of the place they buy their groceries.

I get looks of horror when I tell B-town hipsters, veggies, and vegans that I buy my lunches at the local Wal-Mart. Then again, one look at my paycheck and monthly bills will give you a pretty quick idea why. So why do I deserve to get shit from some holier-than-thou douchebag because I can’t afford to eat the nice things that they get from the co-op? Fuck those assholes.

Some day I’ll be happy to shop at a co-op—when they live up to their image. Until then, I’ll get my produce direct at the farmer’s market, and everything else wherever I can afford it. There are more important battles to be fought, and more important things to being vegan than where the hell I decide or can afford to buy my groceries.

The many uses of Vegenaise

2005-06-07T14:49:00.000-04:00

I’ve been away for a while. You probably haven’t noticed because not a lot of people read this blog. I don’t really feel I owe an explanation, but I’ll just say that life has been hectic, I don’t have reliable internet access, and I work for a living.

That said, I’m going to do my best to pick up on my neglected little anger management project known as The Smoking Vegan, as I haven’t vented in a while. Also, I know I promised I’d come through with a review of the hookah I ordered, so here it is: it fucking rocks my fucking socks. Although I do think I got jacked on a pack of shisha, the peach and apple flavors are de-lish.

On with the blogging, though.

Today: The Many Uses of Vegenaise.

We’re entering summer now, and that can only mean one thing: hot, nasty, vegan sex. How does this relate to Vegenaise? Be creative. I’m sure you’ll figure something out. But more importantly, hot, nasty, vegan sex in the summer can only mean one thing: you’re going to need to gorge yourself on some vegan food afterwards. And that means you’re going to need yourself some Vegenaise.

For those of you unfamiliar with the stuff, it’s like mayonnaise but without all the eggs. Also, it tastes much better (you’ll find most non-vegans will agree with this statement). In fact, it tastes so good, I’m convinced they used highly-refined Afghani heroine in the production process.

There are actually a number of vegan mayo substitutes. Unfortunately, Vegenaise makes all other substitutes its bitch. Take Nayonnaise, for example. The ‘N’ doesn’t stand for ‘Not.’ It stands for ‘Nasty.’ And then there’s you’re local generic store brand. Let’s not even go there.

No, if you want to do it right—or do it right, after you do it—you’re going to need Vegenaise.

Now, there are a few different types of Vegenaise. There’s the normal kind with the blue label, the Expeller Pressed kind with the green label, the Grapeseed Oil kind with the purple label, and the Organic kind with the gold label. I prefer the original, but you might like one of the other kinds better. While they’re all basically the same vegan goodness, they have slight variations in texture and flavour.

What can you use Vegenaise for? The short answer is, “Anything you would use mayo for.” But if that’s all I gave you to go on, I’d be holding out. Vegenaise certainly can be used in lieu of mayo in the standard mayo faire, such as sandwiches, pasta/potato/eggless salads, french fries, etc. But why stop there? Here’s some things to do with Vegenaise you wouldn’t dare try with your Grandma’s mayo:

Want to add some zing to that cheeseless vegan veggie pizza you got from your local pizzeria? Spread a healthy helping of Vegenaise on top.

Like cheeseless bean burritos but think they’re lacking something? They are. They’re lacking Vegenaise. Spread it on top or use it as dip—either way you’ll be eating a little bit of heaven.

Mix Vegenaise with ketchup (approximately half-and-half, or three parts Vegenaise to two parts ketchup) for a french fries, burgers, sandwiches, etc.

Use a thin layer for edible body paint (the stuff can get a bit rich, so let me stress the “thin” part in that last suggestion).

Ring stuck on your finger? Car making funny noises? Well, normal Vegenaise is mostly canola oil. If you know your history, that’s the shit they used to use as industrial lubricant before some genius decided it was safe for vegans to eat. That said, Vegenaise now makes a great lubricant. (Just kidding. Well, about the “safe for vegans to eat” thing. It is safe to eat, but rapeseed oil—rapeseed being the plant that canola oil comes from—really was used as industrial lubricant. If that bothers you, then maybe try the Vegenaise with the purple label instead).

Have an asshole college roommate? Spread a little Vegenaise haphazardly around the portion of their bed where their nether-regions usually go. When they get back to the room and ask what the gooey white junk on their bed is, just smile and say, “Sorry, I figured you wouldn’t mind.”

In a pinch, the stuff can also stand-in for KY. I should say I have no basis for writing this, but it’s probably not far off the mark.

These are just a few suggestions. I encourage you, dear reader, to experiment to your heart's content. You'll never get tired of Vegenaise. It's something no self-respecting vegan should go without, even a piss-poor one like me. And remember to follow the Smoking Vegan's motto when it comes to mayo substitutes: "When it comes to masturbation, accept no imitation." You want Vegenaise.

The right reasons

2005-04-15T08:15:00.000-04:00

I was having a conversation over dinner with some friends recently, and it got me thinking about why I'm vegan -- or more specifically, what are, IMNSHO, the right reasons.

The bottom line is that the reasons for my veganism have changed since I first made the leap about six and a half years ago. Becoming vegan is a lot like going through puberty a second time (which is why, for any kids that might be reading this, I recommend going vegan around age 12 or 13, so you can compound the awkwardness of the worst years of your life). It's a bigger change than most people realize, because often it's accompanied -- or rather, precipitated -- by a shift in certain fundamental values. Suddenly, nothing is the same again. It's a growing experience, to be sure.

When I first made the step to becoming vegan, I was a militant little prick. Not in a bad way, I mean I wasn't a vegangelical, if that's what you're wondering. But at the same time, I was significantly less tolerant of nonvegans, particularly in the realm of taking shit from nonvegans about being vegan, than I am now. Part of what nurtured the growth of that militancy came directly from the endless amount of chiding I'd get from omnis and lacto-ovos alike. Oddly enough, I often got more shit from the lacto-ovos than from the omnis, although I suppose that's a bit besides the point. The other part of what nurtured that militancy, of course, was the amount of Earth Crisis I listened to (and still do). I think I was probably the only high schooler in America that walked around with homemade A.L.F. patches featuring the Avenging Angel graphic, or my homemade "Praise the Vegan Jihad" patch. Yeah, so I kind of got rid of that last one after 9/11. Anyway.

When I became vegan at the time, it had very little to do with the health issues. As you've probably noticed from prior posts or just the title of this blog, it still has very little to do with health issues, something I'll get back to in a minute. No, at the time, it was all about the ethical issues (sorry, I cringe at using the word "moral," I don't know why). I felt like the one guy in the Cave allegory. If I tried to talk to anyone about the ethical issues of why I was vegan, they either wouldn't believe me, or would just tune out completely. My favorite response, "Ew! I don't want to hear that!"

After I was vegan for a few years, I kind of stopped thinking about the "why" as it became just another part of my life. In retrospect, I think the only real reason to go vegan is from the ethical standpoint (animal rights/resource consumption/you like furry animals/etc.) After the dinner conversation, I left feeling like there are probably more wrong reasons to go vegan, though. So here are some things I think anyone should consider before becoming vegan.

The big question is, are you doing it more for animal rights and social justice, or more for yourself, i.e., for selfish reasons? Here are some reasons not to go vegan.

1. It's healthier. Granted, it's much, much healthier. And I kind of lied, because this isn't a reason "not" to go vegan. My point in sticking it in this section is that some people do just go vegan for the health benefits, and I think that's silly and selfish.

2. You can feel better about yourself. That's fucking retarded. Veganism isn't about giving yourself a pat on the back because you didn't eat at McDonald's today. Being vegan is one of the best decisions in life you can make, and one you should feel good about. Just make sure you're not considering becoming vegan as some way to absolve yourself of some liberal guilt, or so you can feel like you've done your bit for social justice and can be lazy about other such struggles.

3. Moral superiority. Sorry, but being vegan will not make you morally superior to others. Now, you might already be morally superior to others, like me, but going vegan for the purpose of lording it over others or becoming a vegangelical is irritating as fuck, and in many respects negates the very "moral" reasons that you're supposedly doing it for, and that would make you "morally superior." (Note that I do not really think I am morally superior to everyone else... just most people.) In many cases, becoming vegan is, unfortunately, a privilege. Most people in the world do not wake up in the morning with the option there. Keep this in mind.

4. Because [insert celebrity/personal hero] is vegan. Going vegan can't be part of jumping on the bandwagon. It is something that, for most people -- especially at the outset -- takes a lot of commitment. No one likes to hear some asshole spout off about how "Oh, yeah, I used to be vegan." It's demoralizing, makes the rest of us look bad, and is generally imbecilic. The general rule: if you're not vegan now, than you never were. It's great if someone you look up to inspired you to make the leap. But they might not always be around for support or to look up to. In my case, Earth Crisis broke up. I can think of worse reasons to go vegan than because it can, occasionally, become a fad. All I'm saying is, if you're going to become vegan, it should be something you're going to stick with. And it's easiest to stick with if you really know why you're doing it.

Now here's the bitch of it all: it is cool, in many cases morally superior, and always healthier to go vegan. And there are a lot of hot celebrities that are vegan. I guess my point in all of this is that the right reason to go vegan is pretty singular: the needless killing of the innocent and defenseless is wrong.

Lastly, here's one of my biggest pet peeves with many vegans: they treat it like they are "sacrificing" something in being vegan, for the welfare of others. Like, "I'm making sacrificing my chance to eat a hamburger today or buy these Ugg boots -- for the animals." That's irritating and misses the entire point about being vegan. You're not sacrificing squat, because doing the right thing isn't a form of sacrifice. For the love of god, don't bitch about how tough you have it being vegan. The worst effect that type of behavior has is in turning off others from becoming vegan. Remember, people are often lead to become vegan by the example of others. Don't fuck it up by being an annoying twat about it.

Liberals prioritize

2005-04-13T08:35:00.000-04:00

Right now: Somewhere in Iraq, a child is getting a limb sheered off by a cluster bomblet. Somewhere in Canada, a pack of seals are being clubbed. Somewhere in Palestine, a home is being bulldozed. Somewhere in the U.S., a liberal is outraged... about smoking in bars.

If there's one thing I love, it's having a smoke with my beer and vegan bar food. Also, liberals who know how to prioritize.

With all the pitched struggles for social justice being carried on around the world at this very moment, the pet struggle of liberals all over the U.S. is the smoking ban in bars. Oh, that and they're fucking bars, assholes. Bans in restaurants-- that's one thing. But fucking bars? If you go to one regularly enough that you're worried the smoke around you might negatively affect your health, chances are you should be worrying more about your liver.

The letters to the editor are always the same. "My husband and I would go out to the bars more, but we hate coming home to our sleeping three-year-old smelling like cigarettes." Bullshit. You assholes still stay at home even after the bans pass. You just advocate that shit out of some stilted sense of self-righteousness. And as a result, the business bars see is starting to hurt, especially around areas near bordering states without smoking bans, or in states where only certain counties have smoking bans. On that note, the bans can also encourages drunk driving. But you probably weren't thinking of that, were you?

No. You were probably thinking about how much better you'll be able to sleep at night now that I can't have a fucking smoke with my drink after a long-ass day at work. You probably think that I'll magically decide to quit since I can barely light up in public without getting a sideways glance from one of you fuckers. You probably think I'll quit, and one day I'll thank you for it. You're no better than the assholes who want to stick the ten commandments on every flat surface of every public place.

Perhaps I should push for a hamburger ban. You know, just for you. Did you know they're probably hurting your health? All the carcinogens in ground round? Heck, even the smoke that's produced from grilling beef is loaded with carcinogens. Maybe I should just advocate a grilling ban. Yup. No more front yard cookouts with your precious husband and three-year-old. Besides, meat and dairy are environmentally reckless and extremely wasteful of natural resources. In fact, you might say animal products are a much worse habit than me putting one sort of smoke or another into my own two quasi-functional lungs.

And really, you omni piece of shite, why should I have to pay for your hospital bill when you get colon cancer from all the animal product you consume? That doesn't seem very fair, does it? But you know why I'm not pushing all of that bullshit as legislation? Because I can fucking prioritize! And you know what current global/local affairs are more important than passing bans about whether or not I choose smoke, or whether or not you choose to eat meat? ALL OF THEM!

Don't worry though-- I'm sure the Iraqi child, the clubbed seals, and the newly homeless Palestinian family are all really happy for you now that you have freed the bars from the tyranny of the smokers. Congratulations. I hope you win the fucking Nobel Prize, jagoff.

Why?

2005-04-11T15:12:00.000-04:00

Because I can.

For as long as I can remember, I've been asked every stupid question that every vegan gets asked by every non-vegan. But, being a vegan who also smokes, I get some additional questions thrown into the mix that the non-smoking vegan never has to deal with. For some reason, omnis feel they have some vested interest in my life, and need to question not only my diet, but how smoking fits into that. Hence the reason for this blog.

Don't you think it's kind of contradictory that you're vegan and you smoke?
Fuck no. What, am I eating the goddamned cigarettes? Are they chalk-full of animal parts?* Why do you care anyway?

Such are my typical responses. It usually takes a minute, but more often than not, folks tend to realize that they have just asked an abysmally stupid question.

Once in a while, there's a quasi-valid philosophical issue behind the question, which normally revolves around the fact that many vegans advertise veganism as a healthy lifestyle (which it is). Doesn't my smoking contradict that? I suppose it would. If I was vegan for my health, which I'm not. Besides, I don't want to live that much longer than all of my friends and family. Just a little.

The bottom line? I like smoking. I love smoking. If I could marry the verb "smoking," I would do it. It's delicious. I like smoking all kinds of things all sorts of ways: cigarettes, cigars, pipes, shisha, and every now and then, the sticky-sticky. No crack though. Sorry. If you're looking for vegan crack smokers, you're going to have to find a different blog.

So here's a little taste of what to expect from the smoking vegan. Other topics I plan on bangin' on in the near future: animal rights, smoking bans, recipes for cooking people, the many uses of vegenaise, and a write-up about the new hookah I just ordered.

I know it don't look fancy, but that's kind of the point for once. This particular venture of mine is all about the content, not about the look. Mostly, it's just a space for me to be mad, and once in a while, funny.

Are you a smoking vegan? Challah back at me in the comments, biatch.

(*To be fair, I have heard that many brands of cigarettes use a horse-based glue for the paper tubes; however, I've never had that verified and personally find it a little far-fetched. That said, Winstons do not use animal-based adhesive, are additive free--so they taste less like rat poison and arsenic--and are my smoke of choice).